Her
by lostandwon
Summary: New Jersey, 1950. Lewis Nixon realises he left something behind in Europe.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: I do not own _Band of Brothers, _nor do I intend any disrespect towards the real men. This is a work of fiction, taking the mini series as a starting point. Having said that, while this story is fiction, I have endeavoured to stay as true to history as possible.

Credit to Michelle Magorian's _Back Home _for the train scene.

Lewis Nixon had never slept soundly. As a baby he had cried constantly throughout the night, the tears perhaps intensifying when it was the nurse who came for him and not the mother he so longed for. As a young man he had kept careless sleep patterns, often dozing at school after staying up into the early hours of the morning, consuming book after book and worrying that he'd run out of time before he could read all of thme. in the library. The war ended any chance of a restful night, and now, in New Jersey 1950, war long gone, he would still jerk awake gasping for air every morning, between 3am and 3.30am. "Shell shock," his mother whispered to her society friends when one of them would comment on how tired Lewis was looking lately, a code which he knew meant "Why has he not shaved and put on a tie?" Which, to be honest, he made a point of doing, when he met her friends, just to piss her off. Dick would always just shrug when he complained about her to him. "You could do with a shave sometimes, you know."

"I've always slept funny. And you know I shave. I just have dark hair. And I think I'd know if I were shell shocked."

But that wasn't strictly true. He supposed he must have dreams of France, Holland, Belgium, Germany, dreams of the never ending noise, the feeling of stepping into nothing, the twisted face of youth, which caused him to jolt blindly awake. But he never remembered anything when he woke up, only the feeling of panic subsiding in his chest as he reached for a shot of Vat 69 – for medicinal purposes, obviously.

But then. Summer. He had been pulled from his slumber, as usual, not even bothering to check the time. a sheen of sweat covering his body, sheets twisted, curtains twitching in the whisper of a breeze fighting its way through the New Jersey summer heat. He closed his eyes briefly and saw it all again, flashing across his lids. Red berets, the din of a battle won, a small upturned mouth, a flash of eyes darker than his own. And then that one thought was in his mind, crystal clear. Not that he hadn't thought about it before. It had clouded his thoughts for, oh God, years, but always on the fringes – until, suddenly, it became crystal clear in his mind, jarringly so. So obvious he wondered why it had taken him so long.

Dick, in that oh-so-infuriating way, seemed to know what he was going to say long before he said it. Entering his office, Dick had nodded almost imperceptibly, his collar still fastened, tie still right up despite the beads of sweat forming on his forehead, and tipped his head back slightly to catch the fan's breeze as it whirred away in the corner.

"What can I do for you Nix?" he said, shuffling papers. The nickname had stuck even though all other traces of war had been erased, both from him and from the country's memory. "I'm a very busy man you know." Nix thought he saw a smirk flash across his face, but as always with Dick, it was gone before he even had time to register it property. Nix waved his hand in the air and sat down opposite him, swinging his feet up on the desk.

"Relax. I know…"

"The owner." Dick finished the oft-repeated joke.

"Right. Look, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to be an even busier man. Just for a while. I need to take off."

Dick lent back in his chair and bit the end of his eraser tipped pencil. "I know."

Lewis fingered the hat in his lap, almost nervously, Dick would say, if he didn't know him better. The room was silent apart from the hum of insects outside the window.

Dick waved his hand in the air, shooing him in an exasperated manner. "Come on, go, Nix. To be honest, this is long overdue."

"You sure? I mean, I could stay if you don't think you can handle this all by yourself."

Dick gave another fleeting smirk. "Remember my Oak Leaves? I didn't get them for nothing you know. Besides. I happen to know the owner."

Nix grinned and got up to leave as Dick picked up his papers again. He paused at the door fiddling with the brim of the hat in his hands.

"Thank you."

The corners of Dick's mouth moved in a small smile but he didn't look up from the papers. "Go. This is important."

Nix didn't know whether he was talking about him or his papers.

***

Transatlantic flight was still something of a novelty, he realised that as he swilled his whisky (VAT 69 went out of fashion long ago) round the plastic cup. Wife Number 2 insisted on taking the train everywhere, refusing to fly as she didn't trust the technology. "Besides, my baby's been through quite enough on planes," she would always coo, clutching his arm. "He was in air force," she would add for the benefit of any company, who would nod knowingly.

"The air_borne._" Lewis would hiss.

"Isn't that what I said?" she would smile brightly. And then afterwards, when they were alone, she would berate him for correcting her in front of all their friends.

It hardly surprised Lewis when she left him in '48 for a man from Union Railroad.

"Sir."

He looked up to find a tightly coiffed air hostess smiling at him, her white gloved hand resting lightly on his shoulder.

"We've arrived."

He jerked out of his daze, realising he was the only one left on the plane. He stood hurriedly, banging his head and gathered his hat and coat, embarrassed as he realised that deep down, he had been waiting to see a green light.

***

The train he took from London to Portsmouth seemed to him to date from about 1901. A peeling poster warned him ominously that "Loose lips might sink ships." He took a seat in a compartment where his only company was a young woman with red hair and bare legs, a reminder of the shortages England still faced.

"Excuse me Miss."

She looked up from her book and he smiled at her.

"What happens if you want to go to the bathroom?"

"The bathroom? Oh, you mean the lavatory."

He smiled again. "Oh sure, I always forget it's like a different language here."

"You get out at a station and ask the station master to make the train wait."

They lapsed into silence again, but Lewis could feel her eyes on him. He wondered if she had noticed the poster and was wondering whether she had just divulged vital information regarding lavatories and public transport to this man with an unfamiliar accent.

"It's been a while since I heard that accent around here." She spoke again.

Lewis laughed. "Yeah. It feels like forever since I was last here. I was in the airborne. Spent quite a bit of time in good old England."

She nodded. "I was twelve when you came over. It was amazing. You had so much chocolate! And," She blushed realising she had just been far too forthcoming. So bloody English, thought Lewis.

"And," she repeated "This sounds stupid, but I though every American accent I heard was Clark Gable."

Lewis laughed. "I'm certainly not him." He paused. "This will sound equally stupid, but I thought you thought I was maybe a spy right then."

The woman looked at him blankly. "The war's over." She stood to leave as the train pulled into the station.

"Not yet."

His voice reverberated round the empty compartment.

***

The crossing from Portsmouth to Cherbourg made him feel slightly queasy, and he felt a vague notion of thankfulness that he had joined the airborne and had gone to France a different way first time round. As he walked to the railway station in the middle of the town he could hear the cries of children playing drifting up from the beaches. He knew from the occasional letters that one or two Easy men had made the pilgrimage here to see the beaches and the vast cemeteries. But that wasn't what he was here for. Another time maybe.

The train he was on looked far more pathetic than the one he had taken in England, if that was even possible. But he was on his way. He realised suddenly that he had absolutely no plan, he had no idea where exactly he was going, what he was going to do when he got there. But as soon as the thought of giving up danced across his mind, he knew he had to keep going, he had to do this. He leant his head against the window, watching the European countryside smudge into an indistinguishable blur of grey and green, willing the train to go faster faster faster. He closed his eyes and reopened them, and it took him a moment before he noticed that the reflection on the train window staring back at him was not Lewis Nixon, but _her._

_Her. _


	2. Eindhoven, 1944

**Disclaimer: ** I do not own _Band of Brothers, _nor do I intend any disrespect towards the real men. This is a work of fiction, taking the mini series as a starting point.

Thanks so much to everyone who has reviewed! This was a rather spur of the moment thing for me, I'm a student who's on holiday and could feel my brain slowly turning to mush after watching too many Gilmore Girls reruns – so decided to do something a little different. The fact that you're enjoying it makes it even better. I just hope I can keep the momentum going! Please keep giving me feedback, it really means a lot, and I appreciate it!

I also know that some of you have posted stories on here, I've already started reading them and I'm very impressed! Feeling a little bit inferior, almost…Give me time to catch up and you can count on some reviews from me soon, promise.

***

Eindhoven, September 1944

"Keep moving! KEEP MOVING!"

The sound of the jubilant town drowned out any attempt Peacock made to keep the company moving through Eindhoven. Nix couldn't believe the reception they have received. He half wondered why the same thing couldn't have happened in Normandy. As he pushed his way through the blur of orange on the street he was accosted by men weeping and shaking his hand, young women insistent on expressing their thanks to him through their lips. He caught sight of Floyd Talbert and a dark haired women becoming very well acquainted and chuckled to himself. If it was going to be anyone, it would be Talbert.

But this was no time for celebration, not yet anyway. Nix could still sense the tenseness radiating from Dick as he approached him. He could make out his narrow mouth set in a firm line as he viewed the surrounding area. Nix nudged his friend in the arm, pointing at his left wrist. "Clock's ticking."

"Yeah." Dick lowered his field glasses. "Do you want to be the one to tell them we can't stay here, or shall I do the honours?"

"Can you blame them?" Nix said as he fought off two pretty blonde women, twisting his head around awkwardly to show them he wasn't interested. Any other time sure…that one on the left really was something. Another fair haired woman behind him laughed almost mockingly at him. But Dick was still uneasy – and ever the consummate professional had accepted a chaste kiss from a dark haired woman while fiddling with his collar. Nix did the same to hide the insignia of his rank. Dick's instincts were rarely wrong.

"We got to get to those bridges." Dick said to Nix, and he could sense the urgency in his voice. He nodded, knowing that getting to the bridges was fairly low down the list of things to do on the minds of Easy at this moment in time.

"And how do you suggest we do that? And where the hell is Buck Compton!?" As if those words had summoned him, Buck appeared at Nix's shoulder, two different shades of lipstick on his cheeks and smelling faintly of champagne. "Come on then, let's do this!"

Nix smiled wryly. "You know Buck, if I was your wife and you came home looking like that and said that to me, your ass would be out before you'd even crossed the threshold."

They chuckled. "Nix, if I came home and my wife looked like you, I think we'd have bigger problems to sort out." He patted him between the shoulder blades. "Anyway, the party's over, we need to keep moving. Clock's ticking."

"Oh, now there's an idea. We hadn't though of that, Buck. Keeping moving! Come on, we've been trying to keep everyone moving for quite a while now." They grinned at each other, knowing his jests were in good nature. But before anyone could offer any realistic alternatives, they became aware of chanting from a large group just behind them led by a group of men in orange armbands with rifles slung over the shoulders who appeared to be in control The noise emanating from them was so unlike the jubilance they had heard from the moment they arrived that it made Nix shiver slightly. The noise cut straight over the cries of the women whose clothes were being ripped and hair shorn roughly. It was angry, hoarse and guttural and the looks on the faces of the men chanting contained pure, unadulterated hatred. The four of them, Dick, Nix, Buck and Harry stood in complete silence taken aback by the emotion which had been unleashed here.

"What did they do?" Harry voiced everyone's thoughts out loud.

"They slept with the Germans." The group turned to find a tall thin haired man in an open neck shirt with the orange armband which marked him as a member of the resistance. He shrugged noncommittally. "They are lucky. The men who collaborated have been shot." He added as if trying to offer them some small measure of justice.

"John van Kooijk," He said stretching out his hand by way of introduction. "I have been hoping and praying for this day for a very long time." Nix could tell, the time seemed to have been etched into his face by the dark circles under his eyes and deep lines on his forehead. "I'm sure we can help you secure the bridges here." He gestured towards his orange armband. "Together we can push the remaining Germans out of Eindhoven. And that's just the beginning."

"Well, any idea where they might be?" Winters interjected before van Kooijk could continue.

"We're working on gathering that information right now." Before Nix could open his mouth to speak, a female voice had interjected. The group turned to look at the origin of the voice to see a young woman with dark hair leaning on the handlebars of a bike, dark hair half covered by a headscarf which showed off a pale face dominated by huge dark eyes. She was looking straight at them which made Nix wonder exactly how long she'd been there. She too wore an orange armband over her fraying dark green sweater.

Van Kooijk said something to her in Dutch wearily, as the young woman shot back a response to him. Van Kooijk sighed. "Gentlemen, this is my cousin Katrien Maartens."

"A valued member of the resistance." She added, smiling at him very deliberately as she leaned her bicycle against the lamppost and moved forwards. "Pers and his friends here are gathering information as we speak." Katrien put her arm around a small freckled boy who she beckoned out of a group of children standing behind her. "His contacts a couple of towns down say they saw a British 2nd and Guards Armoured move through half an hour ago." Katrien said to Dick.

"What contacts? Some 8-year-old he plays football with? He's just a kid!" Nix snorted dismissively.

Katrien turned on him and her black eyes flashed angrily in her face like coal. "These are reliable reports. I'd trust Pers with my life. On several occasions I have. You may think that this," she waved a hand around "This brute masculine force can win wars. But for years some of the most integral parts of this resistance have been women and children."

Van Kooijk interrupted. "Anything we can to do help, we will do. Anything." He looked pointedly at Katrien who rolled her eyes and the fixed them on Nix who shifted uncomfortably under the scrutiny of her stare.

"We'd be happy to have your help." Dick nodded at Van Kooijk. "Get some scouts out to the edge of town in case we have to stay here tonight."

"Captain. My cousin and I have a farmhouse not far from here. It would make an excellent base for you perhaps. We have a lot of intelligence there." Van Kooijk offered.

"Lew, you're the intelligence officer. What do you think?"

Nix nodded. "The intelligence which we had for this operation was gathered from a group around here. Command wants us to try and gather as much additional information as we can."

"OK great. Lew, go with Katrien here, get things sorted. Find out as much as you can." Dick said as he turned back to continue speaking with Van Kooijk and coordinate the rest of the company.

Nix turned to Katrien who had already picked up her bicycle. "If you can't keep up," she said "I'm leaving you." She turned and started pushing her bike through the crowds, stopping to look back at Nix who had paused, staring in shock at the locks of hair which carpeted the cobbled street.

"The betrayed us." She said, looking straight at him, no hint of emotion in her voice, just stating it as a matter of fact.

"But…what did they do? I mean…"

"They betrayed us." She said again, this time a harder edge appearing in her voice.

***

Ten minutes later they had cleared the crowds and were heading out of town on a track leading them towards the fields that only hours earlier Nix had landed in, not knowing what he would find here. Apparently a young Dutch resistance worker with dark eyes and a slight animosity towards Americans. And God, couldn't she slow down a bit? She had legs like a carthorse. He watched them, smashing down on to the road in a pair of old brown work boots. Actually, quite nice legs. His eyes drifted up to see her hips moving inside of her skirt. He shook his head. Not now.

"So Katrien, huh? That's a nice name." Silence. He rummaged in his coat pocket and brought out a block of chocolate and proffered her a piece. "Chocolate?"

She stopped walking. "I'm not going to kiss you." She started walking again.

"And I'm not trying to kiss you. Come on. Would it kill you to show a bit of gratitude?"

She stopped abruptly. "Gratitude? I've been living under the Nazis for four years. I've had to put up with whatever those shits did to my country. _My _country. For four years, and then you swan in and expect me to fall to my knees in front of you for liberating me?" She didn't even sound angry. Just tired.

"Well, you know, we can get to know each other a bit more before you end up on your knees." He smirked.

There was silence as she continued to stare at him.

"OK…guess jokes are not the order of the day here."

She narrowed her eyes at him before she started walking again.

The track was getting narrower and less well kept. Nix noticed suddenly that there were no tyres on the wheels of her bike. When she rode it she must be cycling on the narrow metal rims.

"You actually ride that thing?" He asked incredulously.

By way of answer she swung one leg over and rode it one, two, three pedals before stopping and getting off again. She shrugged. "You get used to it after a while."

"And over this road?" He asked still in disbelief.

She shrugged again. "There is another way back to the house, but this way you're less likely to run into any Germans. They have pretty much continual checkpoints on all of the main roads here. They avoid these roads. Guess they don't like to scuff up their boots."

"They _had_ checkpoints." Nix corrected her tense.

She turned to look at him. "Call me a pessimist, but I don't think I'm liberated quite yet."

"Alright. Pessimist. You know that's a very different attitude from the rest of your countrymen."

She paused. "Maybe I'm just realistic then." She cast her eyes up to look at him and for the first time Nix noticed a weary kind of resignation in them. "I don't mean to be rude to you. It just seems to have taken a very long time for us to get to this stage."

For a while they walked in silence. Nix didn't know what to say to her. In that moment, when he saw that look in her eyes, she had seemed like a fragile and tired young girl, so unlike the fiery resistance worker he had met just previously.

"Your English is very good." He said finally.

She gave a half smile. "I grew up speaking it. I learned it at school, my father was educated in England you see, so we sometimes spoke it at home too. And then I went to university and did some more. I speak French and German too. That's partly why I ended up doing what I'm doing I think."

"Wait, university?"

She looked at him quizzically. "Why are you so surprised? I didn't grow up on a farm you know. I was born in Rotterdam, I went to university in Leiden. I only came here four years ago."

"Why?"

"After the invasion the Germans required all students to sign a declaration of allegiance to them. I refused to support them. I didn't sign, so I had to leave. I have no family left, my mother died very soon after I was born, in 1921, my father in 1940 when the Germans bombed Rotterdam. The next best thing was for me to come here and be with my cousin. I knew he was involved in 'covert activities' so to speak. It seemed like a good option."

"I'm sorry." Nix said and he placed a hand on her arm. She jerked it away quickly as though she had just been burned.

"Come on." She started walking faster. "We're nearly there."


	3. Leiden, 1940

**Disclaimer: ** I do not own _Band of Brothers, _nor do I intend any disrespect towards the real men. This is a work of fiction, taking the mini series as a starting point.

Guess I was on a bit of a roll! Two chapters at once, I fear I might be spoiling you.

Leiden, May 1940

Lectures had been cancelled. Katrien had arrived at the faculty that bright morning at 9am with the rest of her classmates only to be turned away again by the professor and some of the custodians.

"All teaching has been suspended until further notice." Dr. Kaufmann had told them as he stood at the doorway of the lecture theatre addressing the jostling crowd which had gathered in the atrium of the university. Katrien noticed the custodians locking the doors of all the other classrooms littered around her, as tweed clad professors left the building, clutching briefcases filled with lessons they would never teach. She'd heard the rumours building for weeks, but had defied them to actually materialise. The rumours which she had dismissed every time she heard them. "It's the 20th century. That kind of thing can't happen" she told everyone who tried to discuss them with her. Now she wasn't so certain.

"I only know as much as you do about what's going on in our country at the moment." Dr. Kaufmann sighed as he addressed a heckle which had been thrown at him from the crowd of students. "At any rate, the University has seen fit to shut down for a short time until matters have been resolved. Any further questions have to be addressed to the university administration. I don't know anything more. I suggest you all go back to your families at this moment in time. Keep calm. I'm sure this will all be resolved very soon. Don't think you're all getting out of discussing Luther's _The Freedom of a Christian_ that easily." He smiled weakly as the crowd began to disperse until there was only Katrien left and a small group of young men debating something angrily in the corner. Dr. Kaufmann sat down on marble staircase to the left of the classroom where he had spent most of his adult life. Katrien watched as he took off his round black rimmed glasses and rubbed them half-heartedly on his trouser leg.

She coughed nervously as she approached. "Dr. Kaufman?"

He looked up wearily, replacing his glasses. Upon seeing who it was, his face broke into a watery smile. "Ms. Maartens. What can I do for you at this rather unorthodox end to the term?"

"I know we both have bigger things to think about at the moment. It's just…" she broke off gesturing at the briefcase in her hand. "I have my assignment on Thomas Aquinas. I spent quite a lot of time on it and I just wondered whether you could take it in?"

"Of course!" He jumped up. "Nothing is more important that Thomas Aquinas." She fished the sheets of careful handwriting from her bag.

"Thank you, sir." He took them from her and scanned the first page. For the first time she noticed the grey hairs peppering the black hair near his temples. He nodded approvingly. "Very good, Ms. Maartens." He placed it carefully in his bag and picked up his hat from the stair beside him. "I'll try and get it back to you soon." He moved off towards the exit, and then paused. "I've been told that this suspension is only temporary, but I really don't know what's going to happen. Please, take care of yourself, and God willing we'll all be back in that room discussing theology again soon." He took a deep breath and looked all around the airy atrium listening to the sounds of doors closing and feet falling on stairs as the last of the faculty exited the building, memorising the marble busts which watched over them, as if trying to absorb everything from that place into him before exiting and not looking back. Katrien stood still for a moment trying to gather her thoughts before turning to leave.

"Katrien?"

She turned. One of the boys in the group in the corner was approaching her. She knew him vaguely from her theology class. Joost, he sat in front of her and had blonde hair and a half moon scar behind his left ear and always debated with such anger it seemed as though a concept had personally offended him.

"Are you going to see Pieter?"

She gave a slight nod. "I suppose. I'm assuming his class will have been cancelled as well."

"Can you give him this for me?" He held out a piece of paper torn from his notebook, carefully folded into tiny square.

***

Pieter was waiting for her by the statue of a long forgotten rector of the university, the same place they always met when classes changed over. He looked harassed, he had rolled the sleeves up of his navy sweater and the back of his hair was sticking up slightly where he kept running his hand through it. Katrien found herself moving quicker through the crowds of confused students to get to him.

"Pieter!" He turned towards her and his expression brightened briefly as he saw who it was. He grabber her hand fiercely pulling her towards him and kissed her hard on her forehead.

"Pieter, what's going on? I just went to theology and Dr. Kauffmann said that the university is shutting down."

He set his mouth in a grim line and shook his head. "Nobody knows what's going on exactly. They have a wireless in the custodian's room at the medical faculty, and we crowded in to listen to it. It's complete chaos, nobody has any clue what's happening, but I think, I think that Germany might have invaded." He wasn't even looking at her while he said it, but was focussed on some point in the middle distance.

Katrien felt her stomach twist grotesquely. All the rumours which had been floating around, of an imminent invasion, of a war, were real. "But…we're neutral! We've always been neutral! And we've maintained that even when Hitler has been ransacking the rest of Europe."

"I know that!" Pieter was still gripping her hand tightly but his mind was still elsewhere. "Wait what's this?" He turned her palm up to face him revealing the square of paper which Katrien had pressed into her hand after Joost had handed it to her.

"Oh, it's for you. Joost de Vries, you know, from theology asked me to give it to you." He'd already grabbed it from him and was scanning it anxiously.

"I have to go." He picked up his books from the ground beside him and tucked them under his arm. He started to go leaving Katrien standing alone by the statute in an almost empty quad. "But…" She began to protest feebly.

He stopped and ran back to her. He took her hand tightly in his own and looked her straight in the eyes. "Go home. I'll stop by later, OK?"

He kissed her again, this time on the lips and smiled at her as they broke apart. "I love you, you know that. This is all going to be OK."

He released her hand and took off leaving her standing there in complete confusion. She wanted to believe him when he said it was going to be alright, but the truth was, the hand that clutched hers was a sweaty and as clammy as her own.

***

Her bike was the last one left in the cycle park. She picked it up, placing her case in the front basket and headed for home. Even though the sun was out, she kept her cardigan on, feeling chilled right through to her bone. The streets were practically deserted. On any other day cancelled lectures would have sent a stream of excited students out into the sun on bicycles, whistling at each other as they headed to the park or down to the canal. Katrien must have passed only four or five other people on her way back, all walking with a purpose, some carrying suitcases. As she arrived back at her house, she passed two girls leaving the house with satchels overflowing with clothes. She walked straight through the common room where unusually, no-one acknowledged her with a smile and a wave. It was completely empty save for a group of five girls huddled around the wireless in the corner. She headed up the stairs where one girl was sitting sobbing quietly while two other girls tried to calm her down and burst into her room calling "Annemarie?" to find her roommate throwing belongings into a battered brown suitcase.

"Hi Katrien." She said, but didn't stop flying around the room picking up a notebook, a gramophone record, the glass vial of perfume which always sat on her bedside table. "I'm trying to get the next train back to Amsterdam. I take it you've heard? Everything that's been said the past few days has been true. Germany's invaded. No one knows for sure what's happening. All that's certain is that German fighter planes have been flying over Holland all day. I've heard rumours that foot soldiers are on their way, and that paratroopers have already landed. I don't know, I just know I need to get back to my family." She slammed the suitcase closed emphatically and surveyed the small room with its two iron framed beds, identical desks and wardrobes. The china saucer which served as a makeshift ashtray when the two girls had shared covert cigarettes away from the prying eyes of their landlady. The newspaper cuttings of Hollywood film stars and the Dutch royal family which they had put up together. Annemarie's perpetually unmade bed.

"What are you going to do Katrien?"

Katrien shrugged. "I don't know. This is all just too fast."

Annemarie crossed the room to where she stood and hugged her hard. "This is all going to fine. Sooner or later we're going to be back here. I just need to be with my family right now. If I were you I'd do the same."

Katrien stroked the frizzy blonde hair of her roommate which she had helped her tame into plaits just a few hours earlier. She swallowed a massive lump which had been forming in her throat.

"I've left this month's rent on my dresser. Can you give it to Mrs. Grotius for me? And tell her I'm sorry." Annemarie picked up her suitcase and school satchel and surveyed the room one more time. "We'll see each other soon, I promise." She hugged Katrien again. "Look after yourself."

And then she was gone. Katrien sank down onto her bed and looked at the empty half of the room, listening to the panicked voices of the other girls around her, muted by the walls which separated them. She felt completely alone, like her whole world had been just been upended and all the contents tipped out – like she did now with her handbag scrabbling around for coins. She ran down the stairs again, bypassing the phone which was in the hallway. A queue of about five or six girls had formed behind it twisting their hands anxiously and pleading the girl in front to hurry up. She sped straight out the front door and across the street into a completely deserted café where the owner was wiping down the surface of the bar and another young boy was stacking chairs. "We're closed." He yelled.

"Henk, it's me. Can I please use the phone?"

The white haired owner looked up. "Oh it's you. Slice of apple cake, yes, the usual?"

"No Henk, just the phone." She looked pleadingly at him. Today was not the day for joking around. He bit his lip and looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully as if considering this request.

"I'll tell you what. You can use the phone if you buy a slice of my delicious apple cake." He waved the cake stand towards her and wiggled his eyebrows enticingly.

She threw her hands up. "Sure." He grinned and gestured behind the bar. She ran behind it and grabbed it jabbing the handset towards her ear and spinning the dial anxiously, listening to the ringing sound, stomach twisting.

When the familiar voice answered, she felt her knees collapse, and she crouched down behind the bar amongst the cups and saucers. melted. "Daddy" she coughed out, relieved, reverting to her old name for him. She hadn't called him that for years.

"Darling." The voice on the other end sounded equally relieved.

"What's going on?" She could feel tears pricking the back of her eyes. "The university has shut down, hundreds of students are leaving. What should I do?"

Her father could hear the panic in her voice. "Shhhh, Katrien. Everything will be fine." She felt an involuntary sob escape her. She could see her father, gold rimmed glasses, greying moustache sitting clutching the phone to his ear in the tall backed leather chair in his study. She ached to be there with him now, sitting in the cushy armchair in the corner reading while his fountain pen scratched out letters at his desk. She wanted to be gathered up into his arms, she wanted to be there listening to the wireless with him after dinner, perching on the arm of his chair pointing out the answers to crosswords clue.

"I'm coming home."

"Darling. I miss you so much, but I can't let you come home. I keep hearing more and more reports of German soldiers marching into our country. The last thing I want is them to run into my beautiful, talented daughter as she makes her way home to me from university. Stay right where you are until everything has calmed down. Then I will come and meet you in Leiden myself and we'll go home together. In just a few days. That's all."

Katrien sniffed and shook her head although she knew he couldn't see her. "No, I want to be with you now."

"I know you're frightened." She clutched the handset tighter willing herself to climb down the line and emerge in her father's study in Rotterdam. "Please stay clam and stay in Leiden. There will be other girls staying with Mrs. Grotius won't there? And Pieter will still be there. Stay there, please, for just a few days and then I'll come for you. Don't worry about me, I'll have Reina with me." She thought fondly of their elderly housekeeper who had all but raised her after he mother died.

"Yes, Daddy. But only if you don't worry about me."

He chuckled softly. "That's impossible, sweetheart. How can I not worry about my only daughter when she's miles away from me? But this is the best thing, I promise. It's too dangerous to travel right now. At least this way I know where you are and who you're with."

He paused.

"Just know that I love you so much, Katrien. You've made me so proud. You have so much potential, so much to do. You can do anything you want Katrien, and you will. You're beautiful, you're intelligent and one day you're going to do something incredible. Don't let anyone or anything tell you differently."

"This sounds like you're saying goodbye Daddy. Don't be stupid. I'll see you in a few days."

Her father didn't answer. "I love you." He said again, before he hung up the phone.

Later, Katrien would often think that he'd known he wouldn't be picking her up in a few days. He'd known something was going to happen.

* **

It was after 10 o'clock by the time Pieter finally came. "You know you shouldn't be here." Katrien had whispered as she hurried him up the stairs. "You know the rules: No male visitors after 6pm. Mrs. Grotius would kill us both if she saw you."

"Things are different now." He whispered as soon as they were in her room.

After she had got off the phone with her father she had come back and sat in her room, listening to the sounds of more and more girls leaving. She had picked at the skin around her thumb nail. She had drank a cup of tea. She had taken down her hair, then pulled it back in a barrette and then finally let it fall around her shoulders. She ironed the blouse she planned to wear tomorrow. She ate a very subdued dinner with the other girls who had stayed. Finally, she had sat down to begin work on an essay due for next week. She didn't even know why. It was unlikely that class would even still be on.

"Where have you been?" she asked Pieter. He sighed as he pulled off his sweater.

"Just. Around." He rubbed the back of his head and smiled at her. "Come here. You're beautiful. And why are you writing that essay for Professor Ziegler?" He grabbed her hand and pulled her down to sit beside him on the bed. He kissed her temple and put his arm around her. They sat in silence for a while hearing the faint hum of airplane engines from afar.

"The Dutch army has been fighting hard." Pieter said suddenly. "But the Germans are threatening to bomb us if we don't surrender."

Katrien smoothed down the back of his hair absentmindedly.

"They wouldn't though." She sighed and recited the same thing she'd been saying for the past few weeks, the same excuse. "It's the 20th century. That kind of thing wouldn't happen." As soon as it left her mouth it sounded feeble.

For the second time in week, she was going to be proved wrong.


	4. September, 1944

Eindhoven, 1944

The farmhouse emerged out of nowhere, a huge grey brick structure erupting out of the vast expanse of brushland, and if he hadn't known better, Nix would have said it had been abandoned years ago. There was absolutely no evidence of it operating as a farm. A rusty plough was trapped in the churned mud of the courtyard, there was no livestock to be seen and the surrounding fields were wild and untamed save for two plots of land which looked as though some half hearted effort had been made to grow something. The wind whipped between the buildings, making a low hollow whistle which made Nix feel somewhat uneasy. He thought of his own home, his own life, neatly occupying the upper classes of a a township in New Jersey. Why the hell would anyone choose to live here?

It seemed as though Katrien had read his mind. "None of us are farmers. This house belonged to my cousin's wife's family. They lived in town before moving back here a few years ago. They were made to give up their lovely town house to some Nazi officials. Which was maybe for the best, it's been much less auspicious to run activities from here under the guise of being farmers." She leant her bike against a shabby fence.

"But..." he gestured at the rusted farm equipment and the patches of moss around the barn door. "No offence, but it doesn't look like much farming is done around here."

The corners of her mouth twitched slightly in a limp smile, in a manner which reminded him overwhelmingly of Dick. "So we have a reputation amongst the Nazis for being shit farmers. It makes them visit a lot less looking for food." She led him through a gate which squeaked horrendously on its hinges.

"Early warning system?" Nix joked gesturing at the gate. Her lips twitched again but he could see a slight sparkle in her eye as she cast a glance at him. She kept going, squelching through the mud towards the barn. Inside Katrien lit a lamp at the entrance, which illuminated the indistinct shapes of piles of hay and pulled off the dark headscarf she had been wearing to reveal a mass of dark waves pulled back off her face. She led him up a set of rickety wooden stairs on to a second, much smaller level which they walked the length of, shoulders hunched slightly to avoid hitting their heads on a beam. She stopped suddenly and reached above her head, feeling for something on a timber beam. A trapdoor swung open.

"Hold this." She handed the lamp to Nix and reached both hands up to the trapdoor as if to pull herself up. She paused. "If you look up my skirt, I'll slit your throat."

"Duly noted." Nix used his spare hand to cover his eyes as Katrien heaved herself up into the ceiling.

"Ok. Pass me up the lamp." He looked to see her bare legs dangling out of the hole. "Come on up."

Nix limbered up to pull himself up. "Now, if you look down my shirt, we may have a problem." He grinned at her.

She didn't respond, just merely walked away out of his eyeline.

Nix climbed into a tiny windowless room tucked underneath the thatch roof. Katrien had hung the lamp up on a hook over by a desk and it weakly illuminated the place. He blinked a couple of times to adjust to the darkness and could make out Katrien's silhouette over by a tiny desk. The floorboards creaked as he made his way over to her, picking his way carefully over piles of old suitcases and boxes. He jumped inadvertently as he caught sight of himself out of the corner of his eye in an ancient blotched mirror. He turned sheepishly towards Katrien, expecting a caustic remark but he found her on her knees rummaging in an area of exposed thatch, from which she produced a battered black suitcase, a car battery and a small metal box trailing wires. She set them carefully on the desk in the corner, opening the suitcase to reveal a morse code transceiver.

"So this is where I spend a great deal of my time." She began hanging up the wires to tiny hooks in the low ceiling beams where they acted as attenae. She knelt down on the ground again and pried a loose floorboard open and dragged a metal box out of it. When she stood up again Nix noticed her right knee was bleeding slightly from the rough wooden floorboard. She noticed him staring at it. "Yeah, I realised a long time ago that wearing stockings up here was a complete waste of time. As if I had any to wear anyway."

Setting the box down on the desk she proceeded to open in. Nix peered in to find maps and codes printed on cloth, stubby pencils and a small bottle of whisky. She tossed him the bottle. "Go on. You look like you could do with some." He gratefully took a swig while he fingered a silk map.

"Why on cloth?"

"That was an idea from Britain. They're much easier to conceal than paper." She held a piece of silk against her stomach as if to demonstrate. "If a German decides to pat me down and this is on the inside of my clothes, he won't hear the telltale rustle of paper. They can be folded up tiny as well. And as a last resort, they can be swallowed. I just need to send a message to London to let them now we've found you. Then we can wait for next steps." She sat down at the desk and tapped out a message while Nix took another gulp of whisky.

"We have a typewriter and a wireless up here as well." Katrien was taking down the wires and concealing the cases carefully in the thatch. "The Nazis confiscated all radios and typewriters pretty soon after they invaded. We managed to hang on to ours. Everyone who did hand theirs in got a token telling them they'd get them back at the end of the war. But the way things are going I wouldn't hold my breath." She picked up the lamp and moved back over to the trapdoor, sitting down before slipping down onto the lower floor, leaving Nix stranded for a split second in complete darkness before he did the same.

"So, what exactly has been going on here?" Nix asked her as they made their way to the back door of the farmhouse wind snapping at their ankles. "I mean, what kind of work have you carried out. I've obviously some understanding of what you've been doing, seeing as we seemed to get a lot of intelligence from you." Katrien pushed open the tiny back door through which both Katrien and Nix had to duck down to avoid hitting their heads. The blast of warmth which smacked him in the face from the giant range in the kitchen made him feel almost dizzy.

"Well, pretty much that. To be honest the Dutch Resistance efforts have been largely individual. Coffee?" She moved to the sink and began filling the kettle, placing it on the stove. "My cousin was a city official in Eindhoven before the war and so has some government ties. Along with him, his wife and two other members, we form a cell of the GDN – that's Geheim Dienst Nederland. Sort of like a Dutch Secret Service, only not quite as formal as that. You know obivously that the Dutch Government and royal family is in exile. We have links to them in London, which is who we've been in contact with regarding this operation, and who in turn you received this intelligence from." As she was speaking you unclipped her hair sending a torrent of dark waves around her shoulders. She leaned back on her hands against the sink and gathered her thoughts as Nix took a seat at a giant table which occupied the middle of the flagstone room.

"We have a group leader, who used to work for an electrical firm. His code name is Harry, you might have seen it on reports. Our HQ are in the Eindhoven museum, it's a pretty good spot, it means a lot of people can enter and leave from there without attracting too much attention. We have maybe 100 members in the surrounding area? On top of that we're still able to get access to the electrical firm in the town and use the electrical cables and telephone lines from there." The kettle began to whistle and she began to measure two spoons of coffee into the two mugs, careful not to spill a drop of that precious cargo.

"What was your code name?" Nix asked as he accepted the chipped off white mug from her.

She glanced at him. "Lily."

They sat in silence as she took a sip of her coffee, blowing on it gently to cool it first.

"So purely intelligence?" Nix said as he leaned back in his chair.

She nodded. "Yes. There are other organisations in existence which do different things. Around Eindhoven there is a Landelijke Organisatie Voor Hulp Aan Onkerduikers, the LO. They basically shelter people who the Nazis find particulaly undesirable, so Jews and men who have avoided being deported to act as part of slave work force in Germany. But it's difficult to know. The people running it are so tight on security, they only know each other by their nicknames."

Nix paused, coffee cup half way to his mouth. "Jews?"

Katrien looked straight at him. He knew she must have heard him. Yet she took another gulp of her coffee and carried on, completely ignoring his query.

"Militant resistance has been difficult. Purely because of this country. We're small, first of all, so very easy to monitor and control, and our terrain is so flat – we have no forests or mountains where partisan groups like that could hide. And also, you'll find most of the Nazis here are in fact Austrian, so are desperate to prove themselves. They come down like a tone of bricks if there are any attempts made at that kind of thing. For every high level officer who was assasinated, the Nazis would execute 200 political prisoners. For every train that was derailed, they would deport a whole town of men. It's difficult to justify that." She sighed and turned to look out the window. "Although for a while I was involved in that kind of thing. Even recently." She turned to look at him. "There are groups which carry out these sorts of things in this area. Don't tell my cousin, but I've used his daughter's pram to smuggle in explosives into the area. They don't search women and children quite so rigorously."

"What about British agents?"

She shook her head. "No. It's been far too difficult to do something like that. The Germans are all along the coastline, with radar that would detect any kind of aircraft. I know they tried a couple of times to send agents in, but they were intercepted almost immediately. As I said, this whole movement is completely fragmented. We're just by ourself. Really the only people I've had any kind of a relationship with has been Harry," she made quotation marks in the air "And the other four people besides myself in this cell."

"Sounds lonely."

"Needs must and all that, right? Can't be any lonelier than you've been."

She was right, Nix realised as she cast her night black eyes over him, so intense he thought she could see right through him. How did she know? Ever since he'd started basic training he had been constantly surrounded by other men from morning until night. Even when he went to sleep this would be accompanied by a cacophony of the sounds of other men twisting, breathing, snoring in their sleep. Yet even with this constant company he would sometimes get a feeling of being completely alone, a feeling as though someone had grabbed his chest in a fist.

"So who are the others then?"

"Why would you want to know the others when you have me?" Her eyes flashed wickedly at him over the coffee cup and Nix grinned back at her.

"So there's me. Intelligence gatherer and wireless operator extrodanaire. Then John, my cousin is the group leader much to my chagrin." She rolled her eyes. "So basically a coordinator, he's the one that receives orders and executes them. As I said he was c ity official before the war, but obviously lost that job when the Germans appointed German governors to run the country. His wife, Anneke, who you'll meet, was his secretary – such a cliche, huh? – and luckily was retained by the German who took his position which has proved invaluable in gathering information, and also in stealing and forging documents. That's Johannes' job, Johannes van Buren. He's a postman, so great for distributing things as well. He's a terrific forger, does all the fake identity cards and coupons that we can give to those in hiding. And then, finally, Paul de Groot, who is a doctor – a very clever man. And that's our merry band. Oh," she clapped her hands together. "Of course, there's Sofie, John and Anneke's daughter. She has played a huge role. It's her pram we use to smuggle things past checkpoints."

"Is that all?" Nix raised an eyebrow wyrly at her. "Seriously, Katrien, this is incredible. I mean, why did you do this?"

"Why did you do this?" she echoed back at him.

"I had a professor at Yale, horrible old guy, who always told us, never answer a question with a question." Nix made a face remembering sour faced Dr. Wright shouting at him.

"I think our professors would have a lot in common." She told him, but she still didn't answer the question.

Nix sighed. "I'm here because Japan bombed Pearl Harbour."

She nodded. "Exactly. Your country was attacked. So was mine."

Nix wondered whether he would have done this if the US had actually been invaded though. Would he have cut himself off from his whole life, gone underground and risked his own life for the sake of his country? Or would he have found it all to easy to go along with the invaders and keep living the life he was accustomed to. He looked at Katrien who had stood and was now rinsing out a cup over at the giant white sink over by the window. She had had everything going for her before. She was at university, she clearly came from a well off family if she was at university, and nothing would have changed if she had just agreed with the invasion. He wondered suddenly if there was a man involved, and his head was filled with the image of Katrien smiling, books tucked under one arm, the other tucked safely into the arm of a faceless man next to her – a picture he had passed hundreds of times a day when he had been at college.

"Maybe we have more in common than you think then." He told her softly.

She smiled at him then, the first proper smile he had seen from her all day and watched as her face transformed. Nix had another sudden image of the two of them at Yale, her arm tucked into his as his lips grazed her cheek, her satchel banging against his thigh.

"So will you have some of my chocolate now?" He rummaged in his pocket and produced the bar he had proffered earlier which had been met with disgust.

She kept smiling at him as she took a bit.

"But I'm still not going to kiss you, you know." She cast a glance at him sideways.

Nix held his hands up in mock surrender. Kissing. Now there's a thought.

"Come on." She said. "I can hear what sounds like the entire US army on the move down here." Nix suddenly became aware of the rumble of engines and the crunch of a hundred standard issue boots drawing closer. He heard the front door open and the sounds of voices filling the house as he locked eyes with Katrien and tried to hold this moment in time for a little while longer, and to keep reality from grasping the situation and ripping it away from him.


	5. May, 1940

So I've had this on my laptop for a while, but internet has been down! Ain't that always the thing? Next chapter should hopefully follow shortly. Thanks everyone for reviewing, it means a lot to know that people are following my little endeavour and some of the ones I get really make my day!

Leiden, May 1940

Pieter stayed with her over the next few days, sleeping in Annemarie's newly vacated bed. He would leave early in the morning, long before anyone else was awake and then return late at night and give a low whistle underneath Katrien's window, her cue to sneak down and let him in and quietly sneak back up to her room. Once there, he'd kiss her once on the lips and then pull down his braces, kick off his shoes and go to sleep.

"So do I get to find out what you do all day?" she would ask his back every night as she lay in the bed next to him. No answer, even though she knew he couldn't possibly be asleep. "Fine. I don't know why you even bother coming here. Tomorrow night you can forget it."

But every night she would go down and let him in as soon as she heard that whistle, unable to bear the suffocating silence anymore, just wanting, no, needing someone to come and save her from the loneliness of the day.

Katrien wished there was a guidebook for how to react when your country is invaded. She had no idea what to do, how to feel. She still couldn't believe what was happening. She spent vast amounts of time staring into space trying to comprehend it. In her head she had mental images of huns on horseback sweeping across the land, razing tiny villages. Because that's what it felt like, it felt medieval, completely medieval. Something like this just didn't happen in the 20th century. She wasn't stupid, or uninformed, she knew what had been happening in Germany, but that felt a million miles away from her own comfortable life.

She was completely scared shitless, that was a given. She had no idea what was going on, only what the radio reports told her, which were sparse. Apparently German paratroopers had landed in The Hague, Utrecht, Waalhaven...Rotterdam. She closed her eyes as she heard the name of her home city and clasped her hands tightly in front of her. The Dutch army was fighting hard, but they were vastly outnumbered and the Germans had vastly superior weaponry. "You know, I heard they have nearly 800 tanks," one of the few girls left at Mrs. Grotius' whispered conspiratorially as they pressed their ears up against the wireless. She imagined her father, cowering in his study as 800 Nazi tanks rumbled into Rotterdam and bore down on him on all sides and screwed her eyes closed tighter and wagered everything she had on God to keep him safe.

But then there was the boredom. She didn't see Pieter all day and the other girls wandered around all day like ghosts, not seeing anything. She drifted around aimlessly too. Most of the time was spent in the common room listening to reports coming in. She wrote the essay due for Dr. Ziegler. And the one for her German literature class, which made her feel slightly sick as she wrote it, thinking about the German tanks rumbling ever closer to her. She ventured outside once to return her books to the library, only to feel a vague disappointment when she found it closed. She wondered about late fines. She took the long route back to the house, wanting to stay outside and breathe the fresh air for longer. The streets were more or less deserted, with every other shop closed and shuttered. She smoked cigarettes surreptitiously out of the window of her room. She listened to records on the tiny gramophone she and Annemarie shared, but turned them off quickly. It wasn't the same. She read ratty old paperbacks curled up on her bed for hours until she realised it had got dark outside and she was having to squint to make out the page, and so stood up to put the lights on, feeling cranky and disappointed at being dragged from the world which she had been inhabiting.

It went on for four days. Until:

"It's 1 o'clock on May 14th 1940." Katrien edged closer to the wireless clenching her fists until her knuckles turned white. The newsreader's clipped tones were familiar, yet she detected something in his voice that was different. "Earlier today at 9 o' clock a German messenger brought an ultimatum from the German forces to the Dutch Commander of Rotterdam, Colonel Scharroo demanding a capitulation of the city. If a positive answer had not been received within two hours the severest means of annihilation would be employed. The same severe means of annihilation would be employed against every major city in the Netherlands until an unconditional Dutch surrender. While Colonel Scharroo did not received this message until half past ten, he was able to radio the German command and he was granted extra time for consideration. At midday, Colonel Scharoo agreed to the German commands, and Rotterdam is now in the hands of the Germans. A Dutch surrender appears imminent."

A girl behind Katrien stifled a sob. She breathed a sigh of relief. At least Rotterdam was now out of the fighting. He father would be alright. But she needed to get out of here. She grabbed her cardigan from the back of the seat and headed out the front door and walked for what seemed like hours, but when she checked her watch as she entered the city square, had only been twenty minutes. She tipped her head back and looked up at the bright blue sky feeling the sun on her face. But then she was pulled from her reverie by a faint rumble and a bang. It sounded like thunder, but it couldn't possibly be, the sky was completely clear. She looked around for the source of the noise.

"Katrien?"

She turned to see Pieter running into the square towards her throwing a cigarette butt down on the cobbled stones as he did so.

"What the hell are you doing here?" He asked her as he reached her, pulling her arm towards him leading her away from the square. He was moving fast, she could see the sheen of sweat on his forehead and his grip was hurting her.

"OW." She wrenched his hand off her. "Let me go. What's going on?"

He grabbed her again. "You need to get inside." His mouth was set in a firm line. "They're bombing Rotterdam."

She stopped dead in her tracks. "No. No No. They just said on the radio, the Dutch commander agreed to the German's demands. They wouldn't do that."

"Katrien, you're really choosing now to question the morality of the Germans? Just go somewhere safe, go back to Mrs. Grotius' and I'll come see you tonight."

She shook his hand off angrily. "No. Tell me what the fuck is going on." Her voice was raised. "You don't need to explain to me what's going on in this country, but you can tell me what the hell you have been up to all day when I'm alone trying to pull back together some semblance of a life." She was glaring at him, but he didn't blink, and he didn't look away. But he didn't answer either, only ran his hand through the back of his hair.

"Katrien, I know you're worried about your father. But what I'm doing is important. I..." he trailed off. "I just can't explain to you right now."

"And I'm just not important enough for it? Do not treat me like a child. Do not dare condescend to me." She hissed at him through gritted teeth. "You can forget about coming over tonight Pieter. I mean it. Obviously you've got far more important things to do." Her mouth was pursed as she turned and stormed away up the street pulling her cardigan tightly around her, leaving Pieter standing alone in the square, his palms turned upright in a gesture of helplessness.

She regretted it later that night. The fury quickly drained from her body as she listened to the news reports. 100 civilian casualties, 500, 1000, 2000. 10,000 homeless, 20,000, 100,000. She couldn't sleep, and longed to hear Pieter's deep even breathing beside her as her tears seeped into her pillow. Her thoughts went to the last phone conversation she'd had with her father. He'd known, she realised, just as she knew now.

The next day Katrien listened to the unconditional surrender of the Dutch army, and then listened to several impassioned pleas from the Dutch government in exile to remain calm. Queen Wilhelmina congratulated them on their spirit before the stations sputtered out into static before barking German came on asking everyone to remain where they were. German soldiers would be arriving in every city, town, village, soon and would be taking over the running of them.

Her father didn't come that day.

Or the day after that.

It was 3 o' clock in the afternoon when that telegram arrived from the Rotterdam coroner confirming what she already knew, informing her that, regrettably, her father had been one of the casualties.

She avoided the girls crowding around her, trying to comfort her, telling them she wanted to be left alone. Instead she marched straight over to Pieter's lodgings, clutching a small carpet bag suitcase into which she'd thrown some clothes. He was the one who opened the door, clad only in a vest and trousers, he rubbed his eyes as though he had just woken up.

"Katrien." He looked surprised.

She set her mouth in a firm line.

"I'm sorry for what I said –" She shook her head cutting him off.

She took a deep breath. "My father's dead." She watched as his features melted into concern and sadness. She bit back the tears. "I'm going to Rotterdam for a few days, for his funeral and to sort out everything." She felt her voice crack and she hardened it again. "When I come back, I want in." He opened his mouth to protest. "Don't lie to me Pieter. Whatever it is you're doing, I want in."

He took her hands in his gently and looked at the ground before giving her an almost imperceptible nod. She nodded back at him and released his hands before turning and walking off. She could feel his eyes on her following her all the way up the road. Before she turned the corner she paused and looked back to see him standing outside in his bare feet still watching her. He raised his hand in farewell and she closed her eyes briefly trying to imprint that picture into her head, trying to pretend that they hadn't just been invaded, that she was going home to visit her father and when she came back Pieter would meet her at the railway station, as he had when they were first getting to know each other, and take her out for dinner before walking her back home, the backs of their hands brushing against one another, lingering at the front door hearts pounding in unison. When she opened them, he had gone.

As she turned into the square heading towards the railway station where she hoped trains would be running, she saw some military cars pull in followed closely by two troop trucks. She watched along with several other onlookers as German troops poured out into the square, black helmets glinting in the sun, black boots clicking on the stone, like monstrous overgrown crows.

"Hey honey." One of them called out to her as he leant against the truck pinching a cigarette between his thumb and forehead. His friend wolf whistled as a third laughed at her expense.

She stopped walking and turned to face them, fixing a smile to her face, heart pounding.

"Go fuck yourselves." She said as sweetly as she could.

The resistance had begun.


	6. The Farmhouse, 1944

Hello all! This chapter seems a little long to me, but it wouldn't work splitting it in my mind, so I hope it will hold your attention and no one will get too bored! Thanks so much to everyone for the reviews, it really means a lot and keeps me going, even as I start studying again....

Eindhoven, September 1944

"Hey! Hope you two have been behaving yourself." Malarkey burst into the kitchen exuberantly, wagging a finger at Nix. He took a swig from a beer bottle he was clutching and grabbed Katrien's hand. "Donald Malarkey. Remember that name."

"Charmed." She wrenched her hand away from him, inspecting it suspiciously as though he had dirtied it. And then he was gone, boots squeaking over the dark floorboards across the room to join Muck and Penkala who had swarmed into the room talking loudly. Katrien looked quizzically at Nix who raised his eyebrows and shrugged as if to say "nothing to do with me." Behind her, out of the window he could see various trucks pulling into the courtyard spilling out men shouldering rifles yelling at each other. He could make out a flash of Dick's red hair bobbing amongst the confusion as he tried to introduce some order. As he stood to head outside to greet him, a tall auburn haired woman barrelled into the kitchen, balancing a small child on her hip and kissed Katrien on both cheeks.

"There you are! I was wondering where you'd got to." She caught sight of Nix in the room and turned back to Katrien with raised eyebrows. "And here was I under the impression you were on official business."

Katrien rolled her eyes and Anneke cackled. "Meet the darling wife of my cousin, Anneke, and their daughter Sofie." Nix coughed and held out a hand which she took as she jiggled the child on her hip. "Lewis Nixon."

She jerked a nod at him. "Oh yeah. I recognise you. Saw you being made a little uncomfortable by the rather amorous advances of two of my friends." She laughed. "Saving yourself for someone, huh?" She looked at Katrien and then stage whispered to Nix. "I wouldn't hold out much hope with this one though."

"Anneke!" Katrien glared at her, but Anneke just grinned smugly and whispered something to the child in her arms who giggled.

Nix made an uncomfortable gesture towards the door. "I guess I'll be on my way, ladies." He left hurridly, but not before he heard Anneke say quite distinctly, "An officer too?" He made his way over to Dick who had spread a map out on the bonnet of a truck, gripping a stubby pencil in between his teeth. "Hey Dick."

He glanced up. "Hey. " He cast a glance over to the window of the house where Nix could still see Katrien, as she threw her hands up in the air, presumably at Anneke. "Hope you've been behaving yourself. Remember, I could easy get Cathy's address."

"Jesus Christ!" He saw Dick wince slightly. "Seriously, why the hell does everyone seem to have got the impression that something must be going on between me and this women, who, by the way, I only met a few hours ago." He started to angrily light a cigarette he pulled out his breast pocket.

Dick raised his eyebrows. "As if that's ever stopped you before."

"Well Dick, sadly not all of us are next in line for a saint hood. Besides, that's my private business."

"Sorry pal, around here there's no such thing. Now tell us what happened exactly." George Luz suddenly popped up from nowhere. Nix jumped. " For crying out loud. I'm not telling you anything."

George jerked a thumb at the radio equipment on his back. "I need any information she gave you to radio back to HQ. What did you think I was asking for? Now, Sir, I'm going to level with you. If something did happen with you and that dark haired lovely inside, I think it is your patriotic duty to tell us."

"Nothing." Nix drew the word out slowly. "I don't even know why people are making a big deal out of this. No one would be asking this kind of stuff if she was a man."

"You did what with a man?" Harry Welsh stuck his head out from the back of the truck, mouth moving non-stop around a wad of gum.

Nix made an exasperated sound. "Come on, can we be adults now and just discuss the task at hand?"

Harry looked worried. "Now Nix, you see, the thing is, I don't know if Mr. Luz here can behave like an adult." George pulled a doubtful face as though agreeing with him.

"Alright boys, pull it together." Dick stabbed the pencil on a point on the map. "Here, Neunen, is the place we need to take to get to the bridges and link up. I've heard there should be only token resistance, but I don't know what Miss Maartens has told you." He looked at Nix expectantly.

"Miss Maartens, eh?" George pulled a face at Nix.

"She really only told me a bit about the organisation of the resistance movement she's been involved with." He suddenly realised in the whole of the time he had spent stuck in Katrien's eyes, they had never once talked about what he was supposed to learn from her. "We thought that we'd wait until we had more officers around." He lied and grimaced. "Sorry?" He phrased it like a question.

"Nix." Dick fixed him with a stare. "When have you ever apologised for yourself? Don't start making a habit of it. Don't let me catch you doing it again. Now," he turned back to the other two. "Luz, don't radio anything yet. Harry, get all the NCOs together, in the kitchen maybe so we can figure out what's going on. Tell the men we'll be bedding down here for tonight before moving out tomorrow morning." Harry began to move off. "Also, tell them if they even thinking about laying a hand on Nix's girlfriend, they'll be shot." He grinned at Nix as they began to move towards the kitchen door.

"So tell me, what exactly did you guys do if you weren't discussing German troop movements?" Dick glanced sideways at his friend, a wry grin playing along his face.

"I'm not even going to dignify that with a response." He replied, crushing his cigarette stub under his boot.

"Lewis Nixon and dignity. Never thought I'd see the day." Dick smirked.

"Oh everyone's a wise guy today, huh?" Nix shoved the kitchen door open with his shoulder to find Anneke sitting at the table smoking and Katrien standing in the corner whispering to a young man with a rifle slung over his back who he recognised from the street earlier, a hard faced blond who had been leading the chanting surrounding the fraternisers.

"Thank you so much for this hospitality and all the help you've offered to us. I assure you, we will be out of your hair tomorrow morning I'm Lieutenant Winters." He nodded at Katrien and shook hands with Anneke, who introduced herself.

"I'm Paul de Groot." The tall man in the corner spoke for the first time as he offered his hand unsmiling to the two of them.

"Oh sure, Katrien mentioned you to me. Lieutenant Nixon." Nix smiled. Paul didn't respond, but slinked back to the corner and slouched, arms folded against a wall.

"The silent type, huh?" He whispered to Dick.

"Hello hello hello!" The kitchen door flew open again and a tiny man in a brightly coloured sweater vest swept in clutching a brown briefcase in one hand, followed by John. He was balding slightly, wore round gold glassses and a bowtie and was frantically mopping perspiration off his brow. He grasped Dick's hand and then Nix's shaking them hard. "I told you!" He waved a finger wildly in the air. "Didn't I tell you! I said the war would be over soon! I told you again and again this day was close." He turned back to the two soldiers. "God bless you both, a thousand times over."

"That's Johannes. Ever the optimist." John explained. Katrien caught Nix's eye and shot him a small smile.

"How rude! Forgive me, forgive me. I'm Johannes van Buren." He grabbed their hands and shook them frantically again. He threw his briefcase on the table and began pulling out pieces of crumpled paper detailing maps and troop movements. "Anything you need, I have. I'm your man! Anything I can do to speed progress, I will, anything anything..." He continued scrabbling through the paper covering the kitchen table. "Ah more!" He rushed over to Harry as he and a number of men entered the room, and clutched desperately at their hands, talking over them as they tried to introduce themselves.

Standing at the sink biting her nails, Katrien caught Nix's eye and gave a suppressed smile, which he returned, holding her glance for a split second longer than normal. She walked over to the table and sifted through the paper which Johannes' briefcase had thrown up onto the table.

"I understand you have to take Neunen before you can get to the link up point at the bridges, right?" She asked in business mode.

Dick nodded. "We'll head out early tomorrow morning, if we can rest around here tonight. From our point of view the main worry is the number of troops we'd be likely to encounter there."

Paul stepped forward and leant on the back of a chair. "Unlikely to meet anything serious. While in the early years we were faced with huge numbers of Nazis desperate to prove themselves, in recent times the younger men have been moved to more important areas, and we've been left with the older bored ones. Which has suited us well, and now you."

"Sounds fine to us then." Harry scratched the back of his head. "Anywhere I can get a drink around here?" He asked to murmurs of approval from the other men.

"I don't know." Katrien butted in. "I mean, I know where you could get a drink, but I'm not convinced Paul is right." He shot an angry look at her and she stared him back down. "I've heard reports that there are some Panzer forces there. Which means aside from the obvious problem of tanks, that there will be a large amount of highly trained men."

"And who exactly did you hear this from?" Paul asked her.

"One of the German soldiers who used to do the checkpoint at the end of the road. You know, the skinny one with bad skin."

"And you believed him over me?"

"I think he knows more about his own army than you do Paul. I cycled over there last week to visit a friend, and tried to see what was going on. It seemed pretty quiet, much like round here, but still, I'd be careful."

"What if he was messing you about?" Paul asked, his voice raised.

"I heard the same thing, Paul." Anneke butted in, placing her cigarette on a saucer beside her. "It's something to be wary of."

"So we're to believe a 17-year-old German kid who was probably just showing off in front of you as a couple of tarts had a bit of a flirt with him." He drew a cigarette from his top pocket, tapping it on the packet before placing it languorously in his mouth. "Pieter would be ashamed of you."

As if in slow motion Nix saw Katrien lunge towards him hand raised, poised to slap his face and strike the cigarette out of his mouth. Equally slowly, he saw John move and grab her arm just in time and twist it away from him. Then, as time seemed to speed up again, voices exploded into angry Dutch, Katrien alternating between screaming at Paul, who merely took a long slow drag of his cigarette, smirking slightly, and at John who still held her arm in his tight grip, as Anneke gestured wildly at them. Nix glanced at Johannes who was wearily cleaning his glasses on the bottom of his pullover, making him think this was a fairly regular occurrence. Placing the glasses back on his nose he put his fingers between his lips and gave a piercing whistle which made everyone fall silent before saying something incredibly sternly and staring everyone down until they melted back to their previous positions. The room was silent for a brief moment as Easy gazed, mouths open slightly at the scene that had just unfolded. Someone coughed.

"Well, if this evening's performance is over, can someone tell me what I need to radio back to regiment?" George Luz broke the silence as he poked his head through the back door.

Dick sighed and held up a hand to silence Luz. "OK men, we're here for tonight. Tell your platoons to bunk down in this area – we can use the outhouses, right?" He addressed John who nodded. "Great. I know Eindhoven has been a bit of a party, but I don't want too much of a party spirit tonight, we'll be leaving fairly early tomorrow, 0800. We'll talk more then about what to expect with these conflicting reports." He clapped his hands and the men dispersed. "Luz, come with me." He herded Luz out the back door towards the truck parked outside.

Nix looked at Katrien who had gritted her teeth and was glaring at Paul with an anger that Nix had never seen in a woman's eyes before, so strong that he wondered how Paul was still standing. He was sure he would have vanished into a pile of dust if it had been focussed on him. Without ever breaking her gaze she walked past him pausing to stare at him once before fleeing the room. Through the front window Nix could see her grab her bike and head off somewhere. John raised his eyebrows at Paul who shrugged slightly and walked outside towards Dick. Anneke stood up. "I'm just going to go check on Sofie. Hopefully she didn't wake up with all that shouting."

Nix stood awkwardly in the kitchen with Harry and the two Dutch men, feeling slightly awkward about what he was supposed to be doing.

"Shame." Johannes said slowly looking at him.

"What?"

"No party mood." He reached into his briefcase and slowly drew out a dark green bottle of Scotch whisky. "I had been saving this for a special occasion."

Nix's eyes lit up as he glanced at Harry.

"Well..." He drawled. "Mr. Van Buren, I'm sure we can make some sort of exception." He and Harry pulled out chairs from the table.

A few hours later, what had started as a few glasses of the very fine Scotch contained in Johannes' briefcase and turned into a party, which had moved from the kitchen table into the front room filled with dusty mahogany cabinets and formal stiff backed chairs, in which men were slouched. A cloud of cigarette smoke hung above the room as Harry waltzed with an imaginary partner in time to music from a gramophone in the corner.

"Swear to God, she said she knew she was going to marry me when she saw me dance!" He took an exaggerated bow and picked his cigarette up from an ashtray.

"Well it certainly wasn't your face was it?" Nix drawled lazily from the chair he was slumped in, nursing his glass of a rather fine brandy they had discovered lurking in the back of a cupboard.

Harry ignored him and sashayed over to Anneke who held Sofie in her arms. "May I have this dance?" He picked Sofie out of her arms and danced around the room, the men whooping as Sofie buried her head in her hands in embarrassment.

"See, she agrees with me, Welshy." Nix laughed and proffered his glass to Johannes as he came around offering refills.

"Little young for you, huh Harry? Talbert catcalled from his perch on top of a low table.

"Ha ha," He grinned and kept spinning the little girl until she began to giggle. Nix sensed Anneke sinking into the chair next to him, clapping her hands, her face flushed from laughing and drinking.

"Most fun I've had in ages!" She smiled at Nix. "Although to be honest, there isn't too much fun to be had in Nazi occupied Holland, so I wouldn't get too full of myself right now."

Nix stubbed his cigarette out. "Is Katrien back yet?"

"Huh?" She was distracted watching a piece of fancy footwork from Harry. "Oh Katrien, sure, she came back a while ago. She's upstairs in her room." She looked at him. "Aha, someone's sill holding out for her, huh? Like I said, don't hold your breath. She doesn't really go in for that sort of thing. Are you drinking that?" She took a gulp out of his glass.

"Still in a huff about earlier?" Nix asked, choosing to ignore her last comment.

"What? Oh, that. That happens periodically. Paul just really knows how to push her buttons. They were at university together, I don't know, it's some kind of stupid college thing. It's not important." She took Sofie in her arms as Harry handed her off as the music came to an end.

"It didn't sound unimportant to me." Nix said, but she wasn't listening, muttering to Sofie on her lap as she smoothed her hair down.

"I'm putting her to bed now." She stood and gave a mock salute to the other men in the room. "Night boys."

"I think we can all take a leaf out of Sofie's book, and start thinking about sleep." Dick knocked the needle off the record to the sound of audible groans. "The war isn't over yet, let's not get too carried away. Most of the men have already bed down, out in the barn and surrounding area. I think it's high time our esteemed officers did the same."

"Come on Dick, have a drink, just so we can say we saw you." Harry waved a bottle in his direction.

"In your dreams Harry. Come on everyone." Dick stood by the door ushering them out.

"No offence Dick, but if that were in my dreams it would be a very dull dream indeed." Harry gathered up a couple of bottles with liquid still sloshing around at the bottom and drained a glass he found sitting on a table. "I gotta say, I do like Holland very much." He headed out the door, slightly unsteady on his feet.

As the room got quieter as the men drifted out in all directions, Nix felt the brandy take effect and his eyes began to close slowly.

"Come on, Nix, let's go." Dick was shaking his shoulder when everyone else had gone.

Nix swatted ineffectually at his hand. "I'm fine here, really." He could already feel his head dropping, his chin falling onto his chest.

"Please yourself." Dick moved away.

"Oh, believe me Dick, I always do." And that was the last coherent thought he had before he fell asleep.

He didn't know what time it was when he jerked awake to find the room in darkness, the smell of stale cigarette smoke and the sour smell of a crowd of men lingering. He felt a shooting pain in the back of his neck as he shifted. Christ his mouth was dry. He pulled himself up and moved towards the kitchen to get some water, nearly tripping up over a pram which was parked outside in the hallway before hitting his knee off the corner of a cabinet as he entered the kitchen, eyes still unaccustomed to the dark. He swore.

"Your mother know you talk like that?"

He spun round wildly to see a figure at the window. A match was struck and lifted to the mouth to light a cigarette and illuminated in the brief glow he saw Katrien's profile.

"Where do you think I learnt it from?" He shot back, banging into another chair as he made his way over to her. She was sitting on the draining board, bare feet in the sink, a man's heavy sweater pulled down over her knees as she held her cigarette through the open window.

"My cousin hates it in the house." She explained pointing at the cigarette being held out the window. She took a careful drag and then exhaled out into the still night, broken only by the faint voices of a few men still moving about outside.

Nix grinned wryly as he picked a small china tea cup from the sideboard. "Sorry, may I?" He motioned at the tap. She nodded and he turned on the tap, the water spraying her bare feet toes curled up.

"Frankly I think that rule has gone out the window – pardon the pun – since we got here. Seriously, have you been in the other room? Like a goddamn pool hall."

In the fuzz of darkness, Nix couldn't see whether the smile she gave was genuine or not. "Old habits die hard, I guess." He took a gulp of water as she took another drag. "The landlady who ran the boarding house I stayed in at university banned smoking. 'It's not a lady like activity.'" Katrien put on a wobbly high pitched voice in imitation. "So I've most definitely never been in a pool hall." Nix grinned as she continued. "I'm not sure what a lady like activity was. I don't think university even was in her opinion. So, my roommate and I used to have cigarettes out of the window of our room, flush the ashes down the lavatory and then spray perfume around to hide the smell. I guess still having my cigarettes like this, it feels...normal." She stopped and Nix could have sworn she blushed as though she'd said too much.

"Well, when you put it like that, it sounds kind of fun. May I join you?" He drew a cigarette of his own from his pocket and lit it, leaning forward on the counter to hold it out of the ajar window too. He nodded. "So, this is what it's like to be Katrien's roommate. What do we get to do next? Bit of covert drinking," He tapped the canteen hanging at his waist. "Sneaking out to meet unsuitable gentlemen?"

She rolled her eyes. "I don't know exactly what you got up to in college, but I think next we would have probably done some studying."

He made a face. "We could do that too I suppose. But trust me, my college was filled with unsuitable gentlemen. I may or may not have been one of them."

She laughed then, a sound that came from nowhere, and hung on the air between them as she took another drag, her mouth still smiling. It was perverse, he knew it, but in that moment, as a war consumed the world around them, he knew he would do anything to make her keep laughing.

"Such a charmer, Mr. Nixon. I don't think my landlady would approve. No men after 6pm."

"But I'm your roommate, remember?" She has to let me in."

"You're not really dressed appropriately, but we can work on that later." She smiled at him.

He raised his eyebrows at her, cigarette in the corner of his mouth. "Excellent. Getting undressed, I like where this is going."

She leaned forward and slapped his arm "Wait till Dick hears about this." But she was laughing nonetheless and he joined in fighting her off. She leaned back, still laughing.

"I have the best image of you wearing my roommate's bathrobe." She tipped her head back laughing silently.

"Well good, I wouldn't want you to be laughing at the thought of me naked."

She opened her mouth in shock. "Lieutenant! I'm shocked and appalled. What kind of girl do you think I am? Don't make me get angry." But she was still smiling.

"Nooooo thank you, I saw how you were when you went for Paul today. If I were him I'm pretty sure I would have disintegrated under that death ray." He chuckled to himself before he realised Katrien wasn't laughing. He looked at her to see the smile drop from her face.

"That's not funny." Nix cursed himself for saying that. They were back at square one, her as a hostile resistance worker who didn't want much to do with him, rather than the young woman who had a sense of humour and fun as she smoked covert cigarettes out of a window late at night while everyone was asleep.

"Well, obviously." He retorted. "It was all a bit intense."

"It's not important." She wasn't looking at him, but was staring out the window at some point in the distance, where the sky was slowly beginning to turn lighter.

"It didn't look like that to me."

She whipped her head round to stare at him, her thick black plait slapping her on the cheek as she did so. "I don't think you're really the judge of what is and isn't important to me." She threw her cigarette stub outside the window and jumped down. "Goodnight Lewis." She left the room.

He had called her Lewis. Lewis. He wasn't even aware she knew his first name. In the confusion of war and buddy buddy camaraderie and nicknames, it had been a while since someone had called him that. It made him feel much younger, as thought he was home. He thought of Katrien and her laugh. He thought of Nero, fiddling while Rome burned. He thought of home, and strict landladies, and of two wholly separate lives intersecting on this godforsaken farm house in the middle of nowhere. He thought of how her hand felt when it grabbed his arm and wished he hadn't said anything. He heard floorboards creak above him, probably Dick getting up already. He looked at the patch of pale blue sky at the furthest point of the horizon, bringing a new day still filled with uncertainty. He thought of bitten nails and the unshaven faces of the boys in the barn. He wished very much that he knew the secrets of Katrien's night black eyes.


	7. Resistance: Leiden, 1940

Wow. This is awkward. I'm not dead! The past year has been insanely busy for me with finals/dissertations and life in general. So some things, like this, got a little lost along the way. I hate not finishing things, and so the whole time I vowed to finish this. And I will! And by some small measure of apology, please accept these two chapters...

As a side note: the text from the leaflet is virtually lifted from the leaflets the White Rose Movement printed. Their's is an incredible, inspirational and moving story. I'd thoroughly recommend "Sophie Scholl: die letzten Tage" to anyone who wants to know more about them.

Leiden, September 1940

"I'm afraid, if this is the case, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. This boarding house is for members of the university only." Mrs. Grotius had sniffed and looked around the room as if inspecting it. "I'll give you a week to find somewhere else to go. I understand with the current family situation this might be difficult, but regretfully there's not much I can do to help. Good luck finding a boarding house that will take a single woman. At present it's looking doubtful whether you get your deposit back or not. I'll inspect the room again before you leave."

Bitch. Katrien muttered under her breath. Bitch bitch bitch. After everything. She flung open the window to let some fresh air in and the blast of wind blew the newspaper clippings she had pinned to the wall.

Annemarie slouched helplessly in her desk chair. "I don't see why you can't just sign it, Katrien. It's just a piece of paper. Everyone else has." She looked preoccupied with the eraser shavings on her desk.

Katrien jerked round from her wardrobe. "It is not just a piece of paper Annemarie! I can't believe that that just came out of your mouth."

Annemarie glanced sideways at her. "It's only temporary."

She was met with silence from the other side of the room as Katrien grabbed another dress off the hanger and put it in a suitcase.

"Katrien?"

Silence again as Katrien put the last cardigan into her suitcase and shut the empty wardrobe.

"Are you angry at me?"

She started carefully pulling the pins out of the pictures she had above her bed.

"Will you at least speak to me?"

Katrien paused while pulling a pin out of a picture of Clark Gable. "OK, let's talk. What do you want to talk about? The fact that I'm getting kicked out of university for refusing to sign a pledge of allegiance to a fake government, who killed my father? The fact that my world has turned upside down in a matter of months? That this country has gone mad and no one seems to have noticed apart from me?" She could feel the tears pricking her eyes and she stopped and turned away before Annemarie would notice.

"Keep your voice down!" Annemarie hissed. "Do you know how much trouble you could get into for saying something like that?"

"I don't care."

"You should."

There was silence again as Katrien carefully placed the pictures in her satchel. She surveyed the room and remembered when Annemarie was the one who left and she had stayed.

She pulled on her coat. There was already a chill in the air despite it being September.

"Katrien, this isn't worth losing friends over." Annemarie stood imploringly from her desk.

"Really, Annemarie? Then what is. This seems pretty big to me."

"I don't what you want me to do."

Katrien slammed shut the lid of her suitcase and fastened it. "I just don't know how you can sit back and do nothing."

"Oh, do not give me your 'holier than thou' act Katrien. You always overreact. That's always been your problem..."

"MY problem? Oh let's talk about some of your problems, you conceited..."

"...Only temporary and who knows? Maybe the occupation will be OK. I don't know why you have it in your head it's going to be horrendous."

"...Spineless, completely spineless."

"And who even cares about your father anyway? He didn't even try to come and get you or get you home."

Katrien stopped as if you she had been slapped. Annemarie looked defiant. She walked over to the door and took a deep breath.

"Fuck you." She said with venom. "Fuck you and everyone else like you." And she left without a backwards glance.

* * *

Annemarie hadn't come back to Leiden in May. No one had, by the time the university hadn't reopened when it was supposed to be the summer vacation. "Staying here with the family until the new academic year, I think. I heard about your father from Lucia. I'm so sorry Katrien, I really am." Annemarie wrote to her in June. "I wish I could be with you right now but I think I'm safer here with everyone else until this whole thing dies down or gets resolved. Let me know where you are. All my love."

She'd refused to cry at her father's funeral. As she'd watched her father's coffin being lowered into the ground, as she clutched the hands of well wishers, as she sat alone in the house after they'd all left she boxed up any kind of emotion or grief she could have felt and locked them away deep in her chest, taking them out only late at night when she was alone and her tears could drench the pillow.

A few days after she left to go to Rotterdam she had returned, grimy with sweat and tears, back off the train to Leiden. And there, amongst the shiny black of the Germans and the dull brown of civilians trying to get to somewhere, anywhere else but here, there was Pieter. She hadn't told him when she was coming back, and realised he must have spent every day at the train station, scanning every train for her. They'd walked in silence for a while before he stopped her by the fountain in the square, looking to all the world like any other couple reunited after an agonising separation.

"I don't want the others to know we're together." He had said, holding her hand in his. "I don't want to give them any excuse to question our loyalty. If they knew about us they'd assume you were my first priority and that you come above the work of the group. This work has to come first. You know that, all those days I didn't tell you what I was up to."

She had nodded.

"Joost, obviously knows about us, he's a good friend and has seen us together a lot but the others will not know you at all. I hardly knew them when I started with Joost. I've spoken to him and he agrees, and he's promised not to say anything."

"I understand." And she had, she really had. Although it was difficult to pretend not to be together. Pieter had introduced her to Magdalena and Paul in a bored manner as the friend of a friend who was determined to fight the Nazis after she had lost her father and in doing so had erased the entire year they had been together.

And through the summer that was that. She stayed at Mrs. Grotius's with a couple of other students and studied. For what, she didn't know. Pieter stayed too, not making the long journey back to the Dutch East Indies where his parents now lived. And in the evenings, they resisted.

* * *

"What's the difference between a German and this table?" Joost de Vries lent back in his chair and knocked the large oak table with his fist.

Paul de Groot looked up from the envelope he was addressing. "Is this completely necessary?"

"Come on, guess. I bet you won't get it." He looked really please with himself.

"And I bet we won't get this done if you keep behaving like this all night." Paul shot him another look.

"All work and no play makes Paul a very dull boy." Magdalena van Rijn said licking closed an envelope, not looking at either of them.

Over by the stove where the kettle had just boiled, Katrien smirked slightly. She heard the door to the dingy basement swing open and shut again and Pieter greet the group sitting at the table. She heard him cross the room and stand beside her. His hair was sticking up slightly and he shivered slightly in the chill, damp basement.

"Hello." He said.

"Hello." She said casting a small smile at him.

"Here." He handed her a cloth which she wrapped around the handle of the kettle and picked it up. Pieter cast a look over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching and then kissed her hurriedly, misjudging the distance so it landed somewhere between her mouth and cheek. She smiled at him as he grinned back before she brushed past him with the kettle towards the table where Joost was still baiting Paul.

"The table has a mind of its own." She told him as she poured the hot water into his mug. Joost's mouth fell open.

"How did you know that? Not fair, I only hear it today."

She shrugged. "Well, I heard it yesterday. Sorry."

"You're really going to encourage his amateur comedic aspirations?" Paul asked angrily.

"No harm done." Magdalena held up her mug, gratefully accepting the hot water in her tea. "Very nicely done Ms. Maartens." She pushed her gold rimmed glasses up her button nose. "But, now we're finally all here. What's been happening?"

"I've been kicked out of lodgings because I refused to 'pledge allegiance to the German military administration in Holland, which was a requirement if I wished to continue my studies at the university.'" Katrien spoke in an exaggerated German voice, aping the posters and leaflets they had received since term restarted.

"Where are you staying now?" Magdalena looked concerned.

"Oh, I've found a place on the other side of town. Everything's OK." She looked at Pieter who glanced away and she felt herself blush. "And," she continued speaking so people wouldn't notice the blush creeping up her cheeks. "I think I have a job as well. Working behind the bar at Henk's. He's always had a soft spot for me. He seems to be getting a lot of Germans in now, which could prove useful."

"Obviously we've had to move out as well." Joost gulped from his mug, wincing as the hot tea burned his throat. "The whole lodging house has been taken over by Germans for billets. Pieter and I have split up though. Thought it was safer that way." Katrien flushed again as she fingered the curtain ring she wore as a fake wedding ring in her dress pocket. For the past few months her and Pieter had been living together in a tiny flat on the far edge of town as husband and wife.

"They're bastards the lot of them."

"Joost, I've spoken to you before about your language." She fingered the small gold cross which hung around her neck, the faith that had driven her to oppose the German occupation.

"Sorry. Very horrible people."

"Apology accepted." She took a small sip from her cup of tea and Katrien had to stifle a laugh at the incongruity of her sipping tea in a peach cardigan in a dingy basement while plotting the downfall of the Germans.

"The Nazis are continuing to confiscate all radios, but I think we can probably hide one down here behind the fireplace or something." Pieter said. Katrien thought of their own radio carefully hidden underneath a loose floorboard which they huddled behind to listen to broadcasts from London on Radio Oranje.

Paul licked an envelope. "Everything here is under control."

Magdalena nodded. "Good. Let's do it. Tomorrow morning because," She looked at her wristwatch. "It's time for mass and I can't face seeing the look on Father Vogel as I arrive late again. I'm this close to having to confess it." She stood up and grabbed her bag. "Goodnight!" And then she was out the door, heels knocking on the stone stairs.

Meanwhile Paul had placed the letters carefully in piles in his briefcase and was standing up. "I must go too. Can I walk you?" He asked Katrien. She felt Pieter shoot her a look from across the table.

"Oh, no thank you Paul." She smiled. "Maybe another time."

He shook hands with Joost and Pieter and then kissed her on both cheeks, his hand resting on her forearm as she felt him linger a little too long. Then he was gone too, leaving the three of them gathered around the table.

Joost lit a cigarette. "You two need to be a little more careful. Don't think I didn't see your little kiss over by the kettle."

Pieter's mouth fell open and Joost shook a finger at him. "Oh yes, Joost de Vries misses nothing." Katrien felt herself blushing. "Look, it was your idea to keep you two a secret, so I suggest you make more of an effort."

Joost was standing up now and picking up his sweater and bag. "I'll see you both tomorrow then?" He paused in the doorway and surveyed the room, winking at Pieter before he left.

Katrien leant back against the table and sighed as Pieter ran his hands through his hair. She smiled. "That's your fault."

He came closer to her and leant his forehead against hers. "Oh yeah? Maybe if someone wasn't quite as beautiful I wouldn't be drawn to do this every time I saw her." He kissed her slowly, still smiling.

"We can't." Katrien said but she didn't pull away, only put her arms around his neck.

"Why not?" He asked. She had many answers. It was disgusting here. Magdalena would have a fit if she caught them, more probably because of their amorous activities than their lies. Joost wouldn't be able to contain his laughter. And Paul. Paul. She thought them all, but none seemed to come out. He deepened the kiss and Katrien closed her eyes so that she was no longer in the dank basement in wartime, but somewhere else entirely. But the steady drip of a leaky pipe in the corner jerked her out of her reverie just as Pieter placed a hand on her thigh, pushing her blue dress up slightly. She pushed him away.

"Come on, let's get out of here and then maybe we can continue. But I wouldn't fancy my chances very much unless you get me something to eat first." She told him as she picked up her bag. Pieter smoothed down his hair and made an exaggerated gesture of annoyance.

"Katrien!" He whined childishly.

"Come on." She grabbed his hand and they headed up the stairs together and out the back door into the small alleyway. Despite it being the end of the day, it was still warm and Katrien turned her face up into the sun, enjoying the bright warmth of the end of the day without fear if only for a while.

* * *

"_Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes - crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure - reach the light of day? Students of Leiden, the time to resist is now! Join with us in refusing to sign the pledge of allegiance the Nazi overlords impose upon us and preserve the integrity of our country for future generations."_

The leaflets had appeared in a steady stream across the university campus. As Katrien hurried to Henk's on a chill autumn morning she had to suppress a smile when she passed students reading them or heard discussion of the very words she had chosen in hushed tones. She bowed her head as she passed the graffiti which bodly declared "FREEDOM" and "DOWN WITH HITLER" on buildings and hoped to God that she had managed to wash away all the flecks of paint from her hands. She thrust them in her coat pocket just in case.

She was not smiling so much when the Nazis' distributed similar leaflets denouncing them and calling for the arrest of those responsible.

She was not smiling at all when Joost told them he had been stopped and his apartment searched.

"It's pure luck that we'd moved all the paper and stamps over here. A day earlier and..." He tailed off and gazed into the middle distance. "And now my luck has been used up, I doubt I'll get a second chance." He muttered darkly. Magdalena crossed herself.

Katrien crossed the room and rubbed his arm. "The response has been amazing though. I saw so many people with the leaflets and looking at the graffiti – and talking about it! Isn't that the most important thing, that people talk about them, dissect the issues? We've sparked so much debate!"

"A spark which these have extinguished." Hissed Paul angrily, thrusting a pile of the Nazis' leaflets into her face. "So what have we done? Written some letters, printed leaflets, painted graffiti. Good for us." He stopped and rubbed his eyes wearily. "The time has come for something more real. Something more concrete than 'debate'." He said mocking Katrien.

"And what are you suggesting?" Asked Magdalena.

Paul glanced quickly at Joost who looked away just as quickly. "Sabotage."

"No." Katrien said immediately, her mouth fixed in a firm line. "No. Two wrongs will never make a right. The Nazis can behave as abominably as they like, I will never stoop to that level. The right way is intelligent discussion..."

"Fuck the right way." Paul interrupted. "And fuck the Nazis and fuck you if you think that poetry and words will ever change anything."

"Don't you dare speak to her like that." Pieter practically yelled. "Don't you dare even think about saying something like that to her again, you hear me."

The two men stared each other down, the room completely silent.

Magdalena was the first to speak. "I agree with Katrien." She said softly "Meeting violence and hatred with violence and hatred just doesn't seem right to me."

"Have you opened your eyes lately, Magdalena?" Paul asked, his voice still raised. "Of course not, you're still too busy thinking prayer will save us. Prayer won't do a damn thing." Magdalena crossed herself again. "They've introduced forced labour along the coastline to build an Atlantic Wall; they've demolished entire villages, whole communities in order to do that. They're conscripting young men to go and work back in Germany. They're forcing Jews to register themselves with various authorities." Katrien looked at Pieter who avoided her gaze.

Joost spoke up. "It's maybe time to do something beyond listening to covert radio broadcasts and printing pamphlets."

Katrien stood her ground. "It's not right." Magdalena nodded in agreement.

"Pieter?" Paul asked as all eyes in the room swung towards him. He chewed a rough bit of skin at the end of his thumb and avoided eye contact with everyone.

"Pieter." Paul said again, an edge beginning to appear in his voice. Pieter looked up at Katrien, holding her glance as he opened his mouth to speak. She knew what his answer was long before he said it.


	8. Retreat: Eindhoven, 1944

Outside Eindhoven, September 1944

Nixon could hear the hum of the engines in the courtyard as he finished sweeping the house and gathering all the stragglers, even the slightly hungover ones, Harry in particular, and getting them outside.

"Jesus Lew, are you serious?" He winced at the bright light coming through the kitchen window as he struggled on with his gear.

"They are rare moments, yes, but I am in fact deadly serious." Harry groaned some more as the door slammed shut.

Nix turned towards the kitchen table where Anneke was feeding Sofie, whispering something to her in Dutch which made her giggle.

"I suppose you never got that kiss then." She said without looking up. Nix paused. She spooned another mouthful and turned to grin wickedly at him, crinkling her nose. "I wouldn't take it personally."

"I'll try and nurse my bruised ego." Nixon grinned back and ruffled Sofie's hair. "We're on the move again. Thanks for the hospitality." He reached out his hand, which she took.

"Anytime." Nix smiled wryly to himself going through the motions of etiquette, as if he and Cathy had been guests at a friend's beach house for the weekend. Not as if he and an entire company had been camped out in their backyard in the middle of war. She continued: "Take care. And write to us when this whole thing is over. When you're back in the States, I'd like to hear how it all went." She turned back to Sofie and kissed her gently on the nose, making her laugh again, before continuing to feed her.

The engines were already running as he emerged into the chill grey day. He shivered slightly, struck by the peculiarly bright yellow and purple of the flowers in the hedgerow.

"Nix?"

He turned to see Dick tapping his watch.

"Come on, we need to get on the move. Those bridges aren't going to secure themselves."

Crossing the yard to one of the jeeps he could see out of the corner of his eye Katrien filling up water canteens at the pump in the yard. Paul, Joost and Johannes (wearing another gaudy sweater vest) were gesticulating at a map laid out on the bonnet of the jeep. He shook hands with them all, detecting a distinct chill from Paul, and hoped to God that Johannes wouldn't start weeping. He dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief. "Thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you."

"Nix? Come on, we need to get out of here."

"Just a second Dick. I want to fill up my canteen." He shook it. Dick, for his part, pretended not to hear the water sloshing around inside it already.

Katrien took it wordlessly when he approached her. He found himself trying to smooth down the back of his hair as he waited.

"I guess this is it then." He said.

She barely looked up. "I suppose so."

There was no noise between them apart from the trickle of water. She handed it to him and stood up straight. She was wearing men's clothes again, heavy trousers tucked into boots and a giant blue pullover which practically drowned her. Her hair was down put pulled back from her face and the wind whipped some of it into her face. She pushed the strands away as she extended her hand to him.

"Well. Good luck. And take care of yourself." He took her hand and shook it slowly.

"You too." He held her gaze, and she opened her mouth to say something.

"Hubba hubba! We're on the move. That goes for you too Nixon." Harry yelled loudly over the truck engines. Katrien let go of his hand as if she had been burned and looked almost embarrassed. She turned away from him quickly and walked over to join the others at the gate.

As he climbed into the jeep beside Dick, he couldn't help but wonder what she had been about to say to him when Harry had interrupted them. "Keep safe. I'll wait for you. I'll miss you." Was it wrong for him to imagine that she had been reluctant to let go of his hand? Did it hurt anyone for him to think that? He shook his head, aware that Dick was looking at him strangely. He was behaving ridiculously. He'd known the girl for less than 24 hours, and here he was completely preoccupied as they were heading towards a potential engagement. Yet all the rational thought in the world couldn't stop him from craning his neck as they turned the last corner away from the farmhouse to see a tiny almost insignificant speck standing on the horizon, dark hair whipping in the wind, arms folded against the cold and an uncertain future.

* * *

Bull Randleman was missing. Bull Randleman was missing, and they'd had to retreat. And as the others sat in weary resigned silence all Nixon could do was constantly finger the small, perfectly round hole in his helmet. If he had been an inch to the left. Or if he had turned his head slightly differently. If he hadn't been wearing his helmet. What if what if what if what if running through his head. What if what if what if. He could torment himself all night.

"Are you OK?" The concern was written all over Dick's face.

He swallowed the dry lump in his throat. "Yeah. I'm fine." He tried to grin, unconvincingly.

"We're pulling right the way back to the farmhouse where we stayed last night. You can get something to eat and some sleep there." Dick turned away and Nix tried to ignore the leap his heart took.

When they arrived it was nearly dark, and John was outside chopping wood. As the rumble of engines was heard Nix saw the front door open and Paul and Katrien spill out.

"What happened?" John looked confused.

"What always happens," Harry quipped. "Nazis."

"Strong German armoured forces around Neunen. There's no way we're getting through." Dick set his mouth in a firm line. "At any rate it's looking as though we'll be around here for a couple more days. I'm sorry to impose, but at least at this position we know where we are, plus you'll hopefully be able to help us out with any intelligence you might have."

Nix thought he saw Katrien's face contort as though she was about to cry but before he could register it properly it had snapped back to being completely impassive.

"What does this mean for us?" She asked, attempting to hide the slight quiver in her voice.

"Looks as though Germany will be much harder to get to than we thought. And from the brief reports I've hear it doesn't seem as though the 1st Airborne is doing any better around Arnhem. We have to await further instructions, but it seems we might have to find a different route into Germany."

"Take as much time as you need. We're here to help." John said. Behind him Katrien smiled sadly and turned away, disappearing back into the house.

Later, as they were all clustered around the fire in the main room, Nix ran into Anneke in the kitchen.

"I know I said 'anytime', but this is slightly ridiculous." She smiled at him and then lowered her voice. "She's out back."

"I don't know what..." Nix began, blushing slightly, but stopped as she smiled at him and tapped the side of her nose. She turned away and he heard her footsteps going up the stairs. Clearing his throat self consciously, he went outside catching his breath slightly in the cold.

He found her crouched down, leaning against the wall of one of the outhouses smoking a cigarette, gazing out in to the black silence of the surrounding fields. She jumped up defensively when she heard his footsteps.

He held up his hands in mock surrender. "You got me!" She let a sigh of relief and sat back down, pulling her heavy overcoat around her.

"It's going to be a cold winter." She said breathing out, watching her hot breath collide with the cigarette smoke.

"Mind if I join?"

She gestured at the ground beside her. He sat down and pulled out his hipflask. "I have a little something to warm you up."

"Is now really the time to be drinking?"

He shrugged. "It's always time to be drinking." He took a gulp and offered it to her. She shook her head and took another puff from her cigarette.

"You looked a little sad when we arrived back here. Surely you're not that upset to see me."

She tipped her head back against the wall and looked at the sky.

"I just want this to be done." She spoke ruefully.

"I know the feeling."

She turned her head and made eye contact with him for the first time. "I just thought...whether foolishly or not...that when you left, you'd get to Germany, the war would be over and I could go back to living my life normally. But then at the same time I'm thinking, how can I go back to living my life normally after all of this?"

He nodded in agreement and she smiled at him. They sat in companionable silence for a while.

"At the risk of sounding nosey, what were you going to say to me this morning, right before we left?" Nixon treaded carefully.

To his surprise, she smiled. "I was going to say I'm sorry. Sorry for snapping your head off last night when you've never been anything but nice to me." She turned to look at him. "Well, you don't have to look quite so self-righteous about it."

Nixon grinned. "I'm sorry, I'm never allowed to be self-righteous. Let me have this moment." She gave him a withering look and then took his hipflask out of his hands.

"If you're going to be self righteous, I'm going to drink." She took a swig and grinned back at him and then they were laughing, and her whole face had brightened up.

"Well if you're done being self righteous I should probably go back inside, otherwise they'll think we're up to something." She moved to get up and then stopped. "What happened to your face?" She touched her forehead. He reached up and felt the small burn mark where the bullet had glanced away from him. The way he flinched told her everything she needed to know.

"You must be tired. I'll tell you what; you can sleep in my bed tonight. I can sleep with Sofie."

Nixon though about making a quip on how they could share it, but decided against it.

* * *

He tried not to be nosey. But he couldn't help himself. Her bedroom was small and neat and practically devoid of any personal touches. A hairbrush and a tube of lipstick lay on the windowsill; a few dresses hung on a railing inside a wardrobe above a single pair of shoes. As Nix sat wearily on the bed to remove his boots, he noticed some photographs on a bedside table and couldn't help but study them. One was of a man, presumably her father, and a teenaged Katrien, hair plaited, gazing solemnly at the camera, perched on the arm of her father's chair. The other one in a frame looked like a yearbook photo of some sort, a young man who looked not unlike himself, dark hair slicked back from a grinning face. A brother maybe, he questioned almost hopefully. Yet when his eyes glanced at an unframed photo propped up against the other, he knew it was not a brother. This one was of Katrien leaning against railings near a beach, laughing and gazing straight at the camera. With her, and to his dismay he found himself squirming a little, was the man from the other photo – not looking straight ahead as she did but, head turned, was smiling down at her, his arm wrapped right around her shoulder, her arms clenched around his waist. Nix picked it up gently, feeling almost guilty, and ran his thumb across her face.

He heard a knock at the door and jumped. "Just a minute," he called just as Katrien stuck her head around. He guiltily jammed the photograph into the top pocked of his jacket.

"Just checking everything's OK. Captain Winters asked me to tell you that you'll be briefing tomorrow at 0600 hours."

"OK." Nix responded and looked at her for a split second too long until she lowered her gaze.

"Goodnight Katrien." He said.

She smiled softly at him. "Goodnight Lewis," she said and for a split second he felt like he was home.


	9. Resistance: February, 1941

**Author's Note: **Once again, this is awkward! Isn't it mad how life just runs away with you sometimes? All I can say is I have been incredibly busy as of late. I'm still a full time student, working part time and trying to have a life alongside all of that. And all I can ask of you is some forgiveness and understanding. This story will be completed, I promise you! And just because I'm not on here, doesn't mean this story is far from my mind. Even when I'm on the bus, falling asleep, or, dare I say it, studying in the library, I daydream about it and have flashes of inspiration. So please bear with me!

And without further ado, please enjoy this double whammy...

* * *

Leiden, February 1941

"Halt!"

At first Katrien didn't look round. Keep walking, she told herself. Don't make eye contact. He's probably not even shouting at you. If you stop or turn around it will only arouse suspicion. She shivered, even within the depths of her heavy winter coat and pulled her scarf closer around her ears and chin.

But then it came again, louder and harsher this time. "Halt." She turned around.

She'd passed through this checkpoint hundreds of times before. So often she knew some of the guards by first name, and would often stop to speak to them. A few smiles a little bit of flirting – it was easy when you knew how.

But tonight there were different men on duty. Apparently worried about the complacency of their men, the soft faced young men she usually spoke to had been replaced by hard faced, square jawed older men who knew better than to fall for a smile and a laugh. She spun round and came face to face with a lieutenant, dark hair slicked back under his cap, leather gloves making an impatient snapping sound.

"Ah, so you can hear. Thank you for doing us the honour of following orders." His lip curled unpleasantly as she turned towards him. His Dutch was impeccable. "When we say 'halt' we're not asking you whether you wish to stop or not; it is an order. One which you would do well to obey in future. Papers please."

Don't answer back, Katrien told herself inwardly as she fumbled in her coat pockets for her ID. Don't do it. It's not worth it. It will jeopardise everything. She became suddenly very aware of the luger on the lieutenants hip.

"Sometime today would be good. Stupid bitch." The lieutenant snapped, this time in German. The other men at the checkpoint gave a murmur of laughter, but she noticed some of them placing fingers on triggers.

She handed over her papers wordlessly and cast her eyes downward as he looked at them.

"Geertrui Wirtjes?" He questioned. She nodded by way of a response not trusting herself to speak yet.

"You're a nurse?" He question again, reading the profession off the identity papers Magdalena had printed. The lieutenant narrowed his eyes as if scrutinising the paper and ran his thumb over the paper thoughtfully. Katrien said a silent prayer to a God she had long stopped believing in that Magdalena had created an exact copy and nodded again.

The lieutenant let out a long sigh, his breath curling upwards in the freezing night, illuminated by the blinding lights of the trucks blocking the road. There was what seemed to Katrien an agonising silence as he pondered her ID. She was acutely aware that all the other soldiers on guard duty at the checkpoint had fallen silent.

`"What's in the bag, Miss Wirtjes?"

Her breath caught in her throat slightly. "My equipment."

There was silence again, and Katrien could feel a few drops of snow begin to fall. She shivered again, although this time, not from the cold.

"Open it." He gestured to a couple of soldiers leaning against a jeep to come and check it. With shaking fingers, which she hoped they would excuse because of the cold, she rested the bag on the bonnet of the car and undid the clasp to reveal a line of syringes, some bottles, some bandages, some paperwork.

Please, please, don't touch the bag. Katrien tried to breathe normally but her heart was racing so fast she felt as though she couldn't control any of her movements. The lieutenant took a step forward and rummaged a little bit through the things.

"Please don't do that." She found herself saying before she could stop herself.

The lieutenant froze and turned towards her again. "Excuse me?" He hissed.

"I said please don't do that." She swallowed hard and noticed two more soldiers reach for their triggers. "I don't mean to be rude, sir," Yes, that's right, Pieter had always said to be sure to address them formally. "It's just that..." She swallowed again. He was getting impatient now. "I've been treating a patient with smallpox, and some of the used dressings are in there."

He recoiled from the bag as if it had bit him.

"Why the fuck are in they in there?"

"I'm sorry Sir, it's just that we're in short supply of dressings. I need to boil them and reuse them later."

He was looking at his hand like it was some sort of monster before slamming her case shut again and thrusting her papers into her hand.

"Just go." She gratefully gathered up her belongings and turned away into the night, trying not to run although the temptation was there. "Fucking Dutch." She heard the lieutenant swear as she walked away. She walked until the sounds of the checkpoint faded into the night, and until she could see a few pinpricks of light coming from a blacked-out Leiden. Only then did she stop to catch her breath, collapsing against a small stone wall, gulping at the air like fish out of water. She fumbled in her coat pocket again and lit a cigarette, hands still shaking. After she'd calmed down she flipped open the bag and felt around in it for the false bottom. With a small click, it came away, revealing the small stack of communications paper from London and two handguns she had collected from a small farmhouse outside of Leiden only an hour previously. She took a drag on the cigarette trying to steady her breathing as she gazed at her forbidden cargo. She thought of the lieutenants sneer, the fingers poised on triggers and how fucking close she had been to being caught before she retched and vomited over the wall.

* * *

Yet, even at that, life, or what had become her life at least, seemed to carry on as normal, almost as if no one else had noticed that the whole world seemed to have changed in the blink of an eye. She worked behind the counter in Henk's to earn some money, flirting a little with the Germans who came in, gently coaxing information out of them. Even the littlest detail was useful. Her old roommate Annemarie would often be there, her bright blonde hair and hourglass figure making her very popular with the men – one blue eyed captain in particular, who seemed to be a permanent fixture at her side. They drank loudly, singing songs and yelling at each other, completely oblivious to the fact that the noise they were making helpfully masked the almost permanent hum of the printing press hidden below in Henk's cellar, printing anti-Nazi leaflets.

"I thought you were too good for this," Annemarie whispered accusatorily to her as she ordered more drinks.

Katrien was careful not to meet her eyes as she poured the beers and bit her lip.

"Don't think I don't see you chatting up these guys. What happen, you leave Pieter to ride his high horse alone?"

Annemarie was drunk, Katrien could tell from the way she was slurring. From where she was she could see that Annemarie had lipstick on her teeth. She remembered how she and Annemarie used to check each others' teeth religiously before they left the house for such a horror. She kept pouring the beers and tried not to make eye contact.

"Hey! I'm talking to you!" Annemarie was yelling slightly now, and Katrien could feel the bar falling quiet as people became aware of a commotion. She couldn't attract attention. She placed the drinks on the tray, took the money from Annemarie's hands and carefully counted out the right change.

"Enjoy your drinks." She said finally, as Annemarie gave her a long look of thinly veiled disgust.

Annemarie kept coming to Henk's. But Katrien noticed she always sent someone else to get the drinks.

After she finished working, if it was too late for her to make it back to the flat before the enforced curfew for Dutch citizens, she'd sleep in the cellar at Henk's on a tiny makeshift bed in the corner, wearing all her clothes and pulling as many blankets as she could around her, her breath still visible in the dark, imagining she could hear artillery guns and aircraft coming to liberate them. She slept amongst forged identity cards, leaflets denouncing the Nazis and illegal weapons, fitfully, in terror of someone finding her, until she was woken up by Paul coming in early in the morning to start things. Sometimes he came with good news, other times, not so great news.

"The Nazi's have banned Jews from using public transport."

"The Luftwaffe has been bombing Wales for the past three nights. Hundreds of casualties."

One morning he'd come in and made her a cup of tea without even asking her. "A strike has been called in Amsterdam in response to the deportation of the Jews! Dockyard workers, tram drivers, shop assistants – even teachers are all striking!" He could hardly suppress the smile on his face. It was the first time she'd seen his teeth. "And it's spreading! I've heard that some drivers are striking in Utrecht. This is it Katrien, Holland is rising up as one."

The next day he told her, "They've blown up city hall in Amsterdam to destroy all the records! The revolution is coming, I always knew it would."

Yet three days later, after a night when she had indeed made it home, she caught sight of a newspaper which claimed: "STRIKE SUPPRESSED. THREE COMMUNIST ORGANISERS EXECUTED." She felt slightly sick as she read the report of how the Germans had fired at random on an unarmed crowd protesting in Daan Square. Paul's dream of Holland rising up against the enemy was gone almost as quickly as it had begun.

Winter melted into spring, and spring became summer, as the days blended together to be practically indistinguishable from one another. When she'd started resisting, she'd been prepared for the sheer terror, for the stress – but not for the boredom. For long stretches they wouldn't be doing anything. But then as quickly as you she had become bored in the first place, all of a sudden she would be terrified. All it took was one suspicious look; one coarse shout in German; the thud of jackboots on the street outside her window. As the days became longer she made it back to the flat more and more often, able to climb into bed and curl her body around Pieter's, a body which grew thinner by the day.

And then – one day, everything that had began to be normal threatened to come crashing down around her. On a day that was incongruously sunny - so warm in fact she walked the distance to their meeting point without a coat or cardigan, with, dare she say it, almost a spring in her step – Katrien arrived to find a tense atmosphere. "Don't do it, Pieter. And that's me asking you as a friend." She heard Joost say as she walked through the door.

"What's going on?" She asked as she glanced at Pieter who was perched on the corner of the table. He looked so pained that at that instant, Katrien wanted nothing more than to rush to him and hold him. Yet they remained immobile, as he refused to meet her gaze. She looked instead at Paul where he leant against the wall as he turned wordlessly away from her.

"What's going on here?" She asked again, turning to Magdalena, who picked at her thumb nervously.

"We've hear – unconfirmed – but half of Holland seems to have heard about it, that a large group of Jews have been..." she struggled to find the word. "Deported. Apparently they were rounded up from one of the Jewish quarters in Amsterdam in the middle of the night and haven't been seen since. It's difficult to tell what actually happened and what's made up...I wish all of it was made up...but it seems as though they were loaded onto a train and sent somewhere."

Katrien felt a sinking feeling in the bottom of her stomach. "And...?" She asked, sensing Magdalena wasn't quite finished.

"And now the Germans want all Jewish people to register themselves. They've sent out letters requesting such action. One of which Pieter has received. And which he wants to follow."

Her stomach lurched again as she looked at Pieter, who refused to meet her gaze. Instead she gazed wordlessly at Joost, who shrugged.

"I've tried to talk him out of it," he said "But he refuses to listen."

"But...its only your parents who are Jewish. You've never set foot in a synagogue in your life."

Pieter turned to look at her for the first time since she's entered the room. "As if that makes a bloody bit of difference to the Nazis."

"So why are you going to do it? Didn't you just hear what Magdalena said? The Jews who registered in Amsterdam were arrested in the middle of the night and have just completely disappeared!" She felt a surge of anger. "You know they've put barbed wire all around the Jewish Quarter in Amsterdam and are refusing entry to all non-Jews. And what about the Jews in Germany, France, Poland? All those laws about where they can go and what they can do. And here you are, telling me you're going to kowtow to that?"

"What else can I do, Katrien? Huh?" He suddenly yelled at her, springing up from his spot. "What do you want me to do? Just, refuse to register and get myself killed? Use even more false ID papers to cover my tracks? Go into hiding? This is the best thing to do. Have you any idea how dangerous this is?" He banged his fist angrily on the table, making it shake and making Magdalena jump.

"Don't preach to me about how dangerous this is!" She yelled back.

"Exactly! If we get caught, it's hard labour, deportation, maybe even death. You know how many close shaves we've had. If I don't register myself, then it gives the Germans another reason to be suspicious of us. It's better for us if I do this. They won't suspect a Jew who is following all the rules."

"Were you not listening to me, Pieter? Ghettos, deportation...and no one knows what happens after that." She could feel tears pricking at her eyes and could feel the eyes of the others in the room on her. "Don't do this. Please."

Pieter ran his hand through his hair wearily.

"Please." She said again, this time quieter.

He put on his coat and wrapped his scarf around his neck. "I'm going to go and get some air. We can talk about this later."

* * *

When Katrien finally got home that night, after the meeting with the others and after taking a roundabout route back to the flat to make sure she wasn't being followed, Pieter was already there, sitting on the windowsill staring out over Leiden. It was brutally cold in the flat, and Katrien could still see her breath. Pieter, however, was only wearing his shirtsleeves, and was clutching something in his hand. As she approached him she realised it was his ID papers he was holding, and even from some distance she could make out this unmistakable "J" that now marked his papers.

"Pieter, why..." her voice broke as she began to cry.

As he turned her head towards her, she could make out in the dim light coming from a small lamp beside him that he had been crying as well.

"I had to." He kept saying. "For us. For you."

He pulled her to him and stroked her hair. "For you. I could never forgive myself if something happened to you."

Katrien pulled back, eyes glistening in the light and slapped him hard across the face. "How could you," She hissed. "How could you, how could you!" But she dissolved into tears again and Pieter pulled her close again until she stopped struggling and her breathing had evened out.

"You have to trust me, it's better this way." He whispered softly.

It was a while before Katrien trusted herself to speak. "You're the only person I have left anymore. My Father, he's gone. All my university friends, gone. University itself has gone. You're it. You're the only thing I have. And what if something happens to you? What then?"

"Nothing will happen to me," He said softly. "I'm going to be absolutely fine."

They both pretended not to notice the quiver in his voice as he spoke the word "fine."


	10. Hell's Highway: September, 1944

When he awoke the next morning, it took Nix a few seconds to remember where he was, the feeling of sheets and mattresses unfamiliar to him. For a while he thought he was home and almost expected to roll over and feel Cathy next to him. But that image was shattered as soon as he heard the shouts of men drifting up to him from outside his window. As he lay there he became aware of Dick's voice from outside his room, and the low murmur of a woman's voice, which sounded insistent. Katrien. He immediately jerked awake, almost banging his head on a low roof beam. Tying his boots on, he found himself trying to smooth down his hair with his hands and pictured his mother's disgusted face if she could see him now. If they all could see him now.

Opening the door, Dick and Katrien broke off their conversation immediately. Paul was also standing there, slightly behind Dick. He noticed a half empty (oh, to be a half full kind of guy) duffel lying at Katrien's feet. She shifted uncomfortably.

"Morning all." He said stiffly. "What's going on? Isn't it time to be moving out?"

"It should be." Dick sighed wearily and looked at Katrien. "Except Miss Maartens and Mr De Groot are insisting we take them with us."

At this Katrien cast her dark eyes up to meet Nix's gaze. He looked away, back at Dick.

"Well...?"

Dick sighed again, more impatiently this time. "I don't know. They say they have contacts further up the way which could be useful to us, and the Allied Forces in general. There aren't any specific orders from Battalion HQ not to do this sort of thing. Yet I'm not sure how safe, or even how efficient it would be to travel with civilians, especially a woman."

Katrien rolled her eyes and muttered darkly in Dutch. "Please." She said. "Don't patronise me."

Dick looked at his watch and pursed his lips. "You're intelligence, Nix. The decision lies with you really. But make it quickly."

Nix knew what he wanted to say. He felt Katrien's eyes upon him once again and he was done for.

And that was how he found himself riding up front in a Jeep, Paul sitting right behind him, Katrien beside Paul, an impassive expression on her face as the wind whipped tendrils of dark hair around her face. The rest of it was tucked up into a spare helmet someone had found for her. From behind she could have passed as a man, as she wore men's clothing as well.

"Don't think this means I owe you anything." Katrien had said fiercely to him as she had thrown her duffel in the back. But then her expression had softened slightly and she dropped her voice to whisper thank you to him. After a hurried goodbye to her cousin and Anneke and Sofie, they were off.

"You sure this is what you want?" Nix yelled as he craned his neck back to look at her.

She fixed him with a stare which suggested he should know better than to ask her that. "Please. I've been itching to get away from that bloody farm from the moment I arrived there. And I bet John and Anneke are relieved to get rid of their house guests. It's only been, what, two years?" She shouted over the wind rushing through the open top car.

"So what's your excuse then?" Nix addressed Paul, who stared stony faced into the middle distance. He didn't turn his head to look at Nix.

"Somebody's got to look after her."

Katrien muttered something angrily in Dutch to him, and he didn't respond. Catching Nix's gaze still on her, she rolled her eyes and gave a half smile to him. Nix grinned back and turned to face the front.

* * *

For a long while, Nix, had there been far less men in khaki uniforms, could have almost imagined he was not in Holland in the middle of a war. Their advance was swift and completely at odds with the reports trickling down to them of heavy fighting and severe casualties around Arnhem. Maybe there had been some sort of mistake, or miscommunication, he thought to himself. The air was thick and warm, he was in an open top car, and he had a girl on his arm – more or less. The only thing that could make it better would be a coke. Or wait, scratch that, some VAT. Next stop, he was definitely going through Dick's footlocker.

That was, until they drew closer to Uden.

The distant sounds of gun fire and explosions could be heard, like the rumbling of thunder. Gradually, the trucks and jeeps in front of them ground slowly to a halt. Nix could hear Dick yelling as he ran back towards them, and the clatter of trucks opening and the pounding of boots spilling out onto the road.

Harry Welsh reached them, still yelling and gesticulating wildly. "Everybody on the move! Come on! Hubba hubba!"

"Harry, what's going on?" Nix asked as he swung his rifle on his back.

"Heavy fighting in and around Uden. Come on."

"Well, what do you want me to do with them?" Nix asked, gesturing at Katrien and Paul in the back seats.

"Oh jeez, Nix. I don't know! It was your idea to bring them here. This is exactly why we shouldn't carry civilians. Just...keep them out of the way for Chrissakes." He trailed off looking behind them. "Come on! Move your asses, let's go!"

Nix looked awkwardly at Katrien and Paul as they climbed out of the car. "Look, can you both stay out of the way? You know, keep your heads down for a little while. The supply division should be coming up behind us, hunker down with them or something. If anyone questions you, tell them you have clearance from me. OK?" They nodded. "I'll be back soon."

* * *

But he wasn't back as soon as he thought. The reports had been correct. The Germans were obviously not giving up that easy. By the time he finally found Katrien and Paul again, sat down against a wall on the outskirts of town, it was pitch black.

"Hey."

They both looked up. "You probably shouldn't been smoking. It's lights out now. We don't know which undesirables are still around town."

Paul shrugged and stubbed out his cigarette.

"You both alright?"

They nodded. Before Nix could speak again, he heard footsteps behind him and turned to find a young private whose name he didn't know.

"Captain Winters wants you back at HQ. Also, he needs someone who speaks Dutch and he said you knew a couple people who could do that. There are a few Dutch families still in town, and he's trying to explain what's happening."

"Alright, looks like we're all needed now. Come on." Paul and Katrien got to their feet and followed him.

After they had explained to a few very terrified Dutch people what was going on, and tried to find them somewhere safe to stay until they could be taken elsewhere, Dick had beckoned them all over to him.

"Thanks for that. Paul, you come with me, you can bunk down for as much sleep as we can get with the rest of the guys. Nix, you think you can find somewhere for Miss Maartens to stay?"

Nix hoped that his face didn't give away his feelings about that. "Of course." He gestured for her to follow him and they headed out on to the street, past groups of men sitting up and speaking quietly to one another or slumped on the ground wherever there was space to stretch out.

"I'm sure most of these houses are empty. There must be a spare bed somewhere here." She nodded at him and they started to walk in silence.

"So how was..." They both started to speak at the same time. Her face broke into a smile. "No, you first."

He grinned back at her and shoved his hands into his pockets in a most unmilitary fashion. He hunched and unhunched his shoulders. Shit, why did she make him act like he was sixteen? "I was just going to ask how you got on today, while I was away."

She shrugged. "Fine, I guess. We just kept out of the way like you said."

"Yeah, but you didn't get any hassle from the guys or anything?"

She snorted slightly. "To be honest with you," and she leant in conspiratorially "I'm pretty sure most of them thought I was a man. I mean, look at me." She gestured at her mans coat, and hair tucked up in a helmet.

I am looking, he wanted to say. Oh boy, have I been looking. He thought of Katrien's figure drowning inside the baggy shapeless clothes, and suddenly ached to slip his hand under the layers, feel the soft curve of a hip, a waist, a...

He realised he hadn't said anything, and Katrien was looking at him quizzically.

He cleared his throat. "Idiots." Was all he could think of to say.

She smiled and looked away from him. "Anyway, I had Paul to protect me."

"Ah yes, Mr. Talkative himself!" Katrien smiled softly again. "Seriously, I don't think he likes me very much."

"That's just Paul. I wouldn't take it personally. He's like that with everyone. I mean, if you've noticed, he's not exactly laugh-a-minute with me either."

"Ah yes, and why is that then? And while we're on that topic, remind me why he even came with you again?"

The smile ran away from her face and she turned away from him, stopping in front of a shop front. "What about here? There looks like there's living quarters above the shop." She pushed the door and it opened.

"Looks like the Germans got here before us," She said as she walked in. The whole place had been completely wiped out. All that was left there, aside from the furniture, was a couple of mouldy old potatoes, which she kicked with the tip of her boot. She turned to look at Nix, who was still standing in the doorway.

"I'm sorry Katrien."

"For what?"

"I don't know – saying whatever it was that made you clam up like that? I was just trying to figure out Paul, that's all."

She took off her helmet and shook out her hair. "It's..." She trailed off. "It's a long story." She pushed open a door at the back of the shop. "Aha! See, a bed's in here. This will work, won't it?"

Nix sighed. "Sure. As long as you're happy. Me and maybe a couple of other guys can try and sleep above here, in case anything happens overnight."

She nodded. "Night, Lewis."

"Night. Try your best to get some sleep, I don't know how much time we have here."

As it turned out, there wasn't much time at all. Nor the next night, or the night after that. The days rolled into one another as the shadows under Nix's eyes got darker and deeper. Operation Market Garden had obviously not gone as planned. Nix would have made some quip about the Brits and organisation, but he just didn't have the heart, especially not after seeing the thousands upon thousands of British wounded and dead on the roadsides as they kept trying to push up to Arnhem. Highway 69, it was called. But he overheard a bunch of guys calling it "Hell's Highway" and he had to admit that that seemed about right.

Fighting was intense, and Paul and Katrien stayed out of it as much as they could, travelling with the supply convoys, behind the main fighting. Every chance he had he'd try and seek out Katrien, make sure she was OK, but those chances were few and far between. Occasionally he had seen her, Paul ever present, and wondered whether he imagined the look of relief on her face when she saw him.

"You alright?" He'd ask.

"Good." She'd reply. "You?"

"Never better." And sometimes if he was lucky, he'd get a smile out of her.

* * *

"Nix." Dick got him one night just as he was drifting off, head of his backpack, one arm flung over his face.

"Unghh."

"Come on. Get up. Sink wants to see us."

"Bout what?"

"About Paul and Katrien. Come on." At the mention of that, he was up and at it without another word.

* * *

"It is wholly unacceptable that we have civilians travelling with us in this manner. Have you any idea how serious this operation is? How dangerous it is for them to be with us? Indeed, how entirely inappropriate it is to have a woman with us?"

Sink was striding back and forwards behind his makeshift desk as Dick and Nix stood at attention before him. In the corner, Paul and Katrien stood. From where Nix was standing, he could have sworn she was biting her tongue not to say anything.

"Whose goddamn idea was this?"

"Sir, it was mine. They offered us support and hospitality in Eindhoven and offered to continue support as we headed towards Arnhem. As intelligence officer, I felt that this help could prove invaluable to the success of the operation." Nix said, feeling Katrien's eyes on him.

"Well, obviously that hasn't been the case thus far now, has it? I want them out of here."

"Where? The whole area is crawling with Germans!"

Sink sighed. "Not my responsibility."

There was a moment's silence before Katrien stepped forward.

"Sir? If I may?"

Sink looked up.

"You're trying to get to Arnhem. That's where I want to go as well. I have friends and contacts there who I can stay with. Please, if we can stay with you until there, we promise to find our own way from there. When we get there, I can help you find people who will be able to help you, people who have been helping the British troops just now."

Sink frowned.

"This isn't an argument. Trucks are coming in the morning to take my men to the Waal."

"Please." She said.

He looked at her.

"Please," she said again, this time with an edge of despair in her voice.

He gave a heavy sigh. "Alright. But after that you're on your own."

"Thank you, Sir."

He turned back to Nix and Dick. "And don't think I'll forget about this. Have your men ready to move out at 0700 tomorrow. Dismissed."

As they left the building, Nix turned to Katrien and let out a slow whistle.

"You should know, Sink never gives in. Never. Come on, what's your secret?"

She pretended to look deep in thought. "I'd say it's my womanly wiles. Ha." She laughed bitterly and plucked her heavy jumper between thumb and forefinger.

"Well, whatever it is, I wish I had some of it."

They were cut short as Paul grabbed Katrien's arm.

"Come on," He said. "We should get back to the supply division and try and sleep."

"Goodnight Nix."

"Goodnight. I'll see you here at 0700, OK? I'll try and get you on a truck with George Luz. He'll take care of you."

"Sure." She shook Paul's hand off her and muttered angrily to him in Dutch. He folded his arms and said something back to her. Nix stood where he was and watched them walk into the night until he couldn't see them anymore.


	11. Leiden, 1942

**A/N: **Here I am again, keeping my promises! Hope these are enjoyed.

The storyline towards the end of this chapter is based on a true historical event involving the Dutch Resistance and the murder of a fairly high ranking Nzi official. I have moved the place and time to fit my story.

Thanks for reading everyone!

* * *

Leiden, 1942

When America had joined the war, Katrien was sure the end was within sight. As the group listened to President Roosevelt's declaration of war, they huddled close together for warmth, their breath coming out as vapour. "A date which will live in infamy" he said, and they tipped their cups of brandy towards one another, both for the young men lost at Pearl Harbor and to renewed hope. "This is it," Pieter whispered to her later that night as she buried her head into his chest in bed. She closed her eyes and saw boat after boat sailing her way, filled with shining, Clark Gable lookalikes in uniform, ready to vanquish the foe with a flick of a sword and the twitch of a moustache. She laughed softly at that image. If only things were that easy.

If only.

New Year was subdued, spent with just her and Pieter in their tiny apartment. As they watched the dial on their clock tick onto midnight they whispered happy new year to each other and raised a glass to the oncoming year. The streets outside were uncharacteristically quiet, devoid of the usual New Year sounds of laughter and talking. When she peered outside the window, to see only darkness for miles, she felt Pieter come up behind and wrap his arms around her waist. She smelt the whisky on his breath as he buried his face in her neck. "I love you." He said.

"I know. I love you too." She replied, still looking out the window.

"No," he said, as he turned her to face him. "I love you." He stroked her hair and placed a hand on either side of her face. "I want you to know that." There was a lump in her throat as he kissed her slowly, mouths open.

Later, as Pieter lay sprawled asleep on the bed, Katrien smoked a cigarette in the kitchen, feet in the sink, window open just slightly to toss the ash out of. She thought of New Year's last year, how she was so sure 1941 would be the year of their liberation. She thought of the one before that, how she and Pieter had been out dancing, how he had drunk too much, his face flushed, and how he slipped on the ice on the way home trying to dance with her. How she had tipped her head back laughing at him scrabbling on the ice. How he had got up again and covered her exposed neck with kisses, the two of them laughing until they could hardly breathe. She thought of lunch with her father the day after that and felt the lump rising in her throat again. Swallowing it, she exhaled and rubbed her eyes fiercely with the heel of her palm. Not today. Not January 1st, 1942 – what would surely be the year to end the war.

"Katrien?"

She heard Pieter stir in the bedroom.

"I'm here." She called, stubbing the cigarette out and moving towards the bedroom. "I'm here."

* * *

If only.

If only.

If only 1942 was to be the year to end the war. As the months crept by, and things got worse and worse, Katrien doubted her optimism. Japan declared war on the Netherlands and seized the Dutch East Indies, where Pieter's parents and brother and sister were. The Siege of Leningrad went on and on with more and more seemingly unending horror. More and more anti-Jewish decrees came into force. Jews are not allowed to work as doctors. Jewish staff at schools and universities are required to leave. Reports came from Amsterdam of Jews being woken in the night and sent away on trucks and trains to unknown destinations.

Jews are forced to wear the yellow star of David in public.

Katrien had laughed when she saw Pieter's big fingers clumsily stitching his brown overcoat, then cried when she saw what it was. Pieter had tried to joke with her. "Don't be jealous! I can make one for you too." But she saw the fear in his eyes, the fear he knew was ever present.

The day after, she found Pieter and Joost standing their mouths set in a grim line over the printing press which ran out leaflet after leaflet denouncing this latest decree. Magdalena sat in the corner peering over her glasses and squinting at the papers in front of her.

"Do you want to help me with this, Katrien?" She asked. "I'm trying to make more ration books and get food to people who have extra mouths to feed." Across the city and surrounding area, indeed, across the country, more and more Jews were going into hiding.

"Please." She had implored Pieter to do the same thing last night. "Please do it for me."

"Where? With whom? The only friends, the only people I can trust are you, and Joost, Paul and Magdalena. Who can hide me out of you? It will only arouse suspicion, it will only be worse for you if, God forbid, we are caught. And I'm not hiding my way out of this. I have to do something."

"Please." She whispered to him, taking both of his hands in hers.

"No." He shook her off angrily and went back to his sewing. "And don't ask me again."

Katrien smiled as best she could at Magdalena. "Of course," she said, ignoring the thick fog of silence which had settled all across the room.

"This just isn't enough!" Joost exploded suddenly, knocking a pile of stacked leaflets across the room.

Magdalena got up and started collecting the scattered pieces of paper from the floor. "It's OK, Joost."

"No it's not! It's been almost two years since we were invaded? And what have we done. Fuck all!" He aimed a kick at a waste paper bucket beside the table. It went flying, its metal clanging emptily against the walls. He slumped into the chair nearest him, head in his hands. "Two years ago we said we needed to do more than print leaflets and graffiti." He said, his voice quieter now. "And since then, other than collecting information, couriering weapons for other groups to use, nothing has changed."

"What do you want us to do about it, Joost?" Magdalena spoke quietly.

"I want to do something real. Something so big it will definitely change things." Joost spoke grimly. "I know people through the Communist Party and there is a movement towards something big."

"Because the CP's plan worked really well last time," Paul spoke mockingly. "They organised the February Strike last year and what happened? The leaders were executed and German soldiers fired at unarmed civilians."

"You should know that I'm not asking you." Joost said. "I'm taking part in this plan whether you agree to it or not. We don't need your help. I just thought some of you might want to stop fucking around and do something real."

He was met with silence.

"Well, it's happening whether you like it or not." He picked up his jacket and started towards the door.

"Joost, if you do this and it goes wrong, it will seriously jeopardise everything we've been doing and put us all in danger!" Pieter spoke sharply and it made Joost pause. Then, without even turning to look at them, he walked out.

* * *

"Pardon me boy, is that the Chattanooga choo choo?" Pieter sang badly along to the wireless, waltzing with an imaginary partner. It was later that night and they were in their apartment, Pieter up on the hearth, Katrien laying on the couch laughing at him.

"Don't give up the day job, huh?"

He snapped his fingers and grinned at her. "Oh, this is how I moonlight. Resistance extraordinaire by day, singer by night. Woo woo!" He imitated the noise of a train in time with the music making Katrien cover her eyes with her hands and laugh.

"Just as well I fell for you before I saw you dance."

Pieter slumped into the sofa next to her. "Move your legs," He said, shifting them to the side so he could sit down. "And we all know you fell for my dashing good looks, intelligence and amazing sense of humour anyway."

"Don't forget modesty." Katrien retorted.

He smiled at her and rubbed her knee.

"What do you think Joost is planning on doing? It better not be anything stupid." Katrien bit her lip.

Pieter gave an exaggerated groan. "Come on, we're not talking about that tonight. Remember, work stays at the office."

"I know, I know." She smiled, but the smile faded from her face fast. She had so many worries in her mind, swirling angrily away, along with the complete terror she felt just about any time she walked past a German which could turn into overwhelming boredom whilst hiding away indoors.

"Come on." Pieter jumped up, grabbing her hand and pulling her up with him. "We have Holland's premiere nightclub right here. And what's that?" He cupped his ear. "The Glenn Miller Orchestra are playing! We have..." He glanced about. "The finest cocktails available! The swankiest outfits!" Katrien looked down at her fairly ordinary dark green dress but smiled in spite of herself.

"And this man wants to dance with the best girl here." Pieter gave an exaggerated bow and Katrien couldn't stop herself laughing, all her worries being pushed further and further to the back of her mind.

"Soooo what do you say? Don't leave a guy hanging." He held out an outstretched hand to her and she took it. He pulled her closer to him, slipping an arm around her waist. Katrien was a tall woman, but Pieter was taller and she leant the side her face against his shoulder and felt themselves move slowly to the music, even though it was a fast song playing. She took a deep breath, smelling his scent on his heavy navy pullover, feeling the scratch of the wool against her cheek. They pulled apart only when the music stopped.

"Oh, and would you look at that! We seem to have been awarded a prize for our dancing." Pieter smiled, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a brand new chocolate bar.

"Where did you..." She said reaching for it.

"Uh uh." Pieter smiled shaking his head. "Shut your eyes."

She did, and heard the rustle of the paper wrapper. Then she felt a soft kiss opening her lips and felt a square of chocolate being slipped inside. Her eyes opened wide as she savoured the taste of joy, something which she felt like she had long forgotten.

* * *

As it happened, Joost never got the chance to do what he had been planning to.

Katrien knew there was something wrong before she even turned the corner of the street to go to Henk's. It was too noisy, noisier than what it should have been. As she cautiously rounded the corner, she saw two SS cars parked outside the cafe, and a number of uniformed soldiers standing around them and guarding the entrance. Her breath caught in her throat and she felt a wave of nausea come over her. Keep walking, she told herself as she fought to keep her breathing steady. If they saw her turn back, they'd surely come after her. She would just keep walking, past Henk's and pretend she was going somewhere else.

"_Halt, bitte." _ One of the soldiers moved towards her. She stopped.

"_Papieren." _She presented her ID card, her real one.

He looked at it and then looked up at her before signalling another soldier over. She swallowed and tried not to look nervous.

"Where are you going?" The second soldier asked in halting Dutch. He was summoned because he was a translator, she thought.

"I'm going to visit a friend. On Oude Rijn. By the canal." Katrien replied, looking at the ground.

"You should hurry. Get out of here. There's arrests being made." She looked up at him and realised he was young. Younger than her perhaps. He had a soft face, no hint of facial hair at all.

She nodded.

"Good, on your way." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

"Heil Hitler!" Called the one who had asked her to stop originally. She nodded and smiled weakly at him before moving away. Don't look at anyone, she thought to herself. She felt like everything was going in slow motion. Just get to the corner, turn it and then you're OK. She focused on the ground, ignoring the jeers from the soldiers around here. As she passed the front door at Henk's a noise caused her to look up. There she saw Joost, in handcuffs, flanked by two men in black trenchcoats, being pushed roughly towards one of the cars. He looked up at her then glanced away immediately. That was the deal they had all made. Don't acknowledge the others at all if you're caught. She tore her eyes away as he was pushed into the back of the car and looked up instead, noticing the window of her old room. As she looked she could have sworn she saw Annemarie at the window, but then the curtains twitched and she was gone.

Then she was round the corner, and on seeing the coast was clear burst into a sprint. First stop, Magdalena's place, she was closest. She had arrangements to live with the priest in return for cleaning the church. She found her tidying the front pews. Catching her breath, she walked calmly down the aisle, past those there for early morning prayers and lighting candles, and knelt quietly beside Magdalena who looked up at her, surprise in her face. Katrien placed a finger to her mouth signalling her to be quiet and rested her elbows on the pew in front of her, pretending to pray. "Joost has been arrested." She mumbled quietly and heard the sharp intake of breath from Magdalena. "Stay alert." Then she crossed herself and left.

Paul was next. She found him mopping the hallway floor of the main university building, where he had been working to help the janitors since being forced to leave. It was quiet, classes hadn't started yet.

"Katrien, what are you..." He looked up and smiled at her in surprise and delight. Katrien shook her head and pointed towards a classroom. He unlocked the door with the keys that hung at his waist. "Joost has been arrested." She said as soon as they were inside. "Stay alert. Keep a low profile." She made to go, but Paul grabbed her wrist.

"Katrien, where..."

"I have to go find Pieter." She said.

"Ok." He paused, still holding on to her wrist. "Look after yourself." He said quietly before finally letting go.

Katrien was not a religious woman at all, but she found herself praying the whole way home that she wouldn't find SS cars pulled up outside her flat and see Pieter being pulled out in handcuffs. For perhaps the first time, her prayers were answered. No one was there and as she burst through the front door, she saw Pieter standing by the stove in the kitchen, clad in his trousers and undershirt.

"Katrien, what..."

She cut him off by throwing her arms around him and kissing him. "Thank God," she murmured. "Joost has just been arrested by the SS." She heard Pieter take a sharp intake of breath and clutch her tighter.

They barely slept for the next few nights. They lay painfully awake in bed, holding one another, hardly breathing just waiting for the sound of the door to come crashing in and the sound of jackboots on the wooden floors.

A week later, General Huber was dead. Two members of the resistance rang his doorbell, shot him in the stomach and then fled.

"This is what Joost must have been talking about doing," Pieter murmured softly as he looked at the newspaper.

The Germans threatened reprisals. And then they carried out their threats. Fifty Dutch prisoners, mostly captured resistance workers and other dissidents were to be shot in the main street in Leiden. From their apartment, Pieter and Katrien could hear the shots being fired, a horrendous volley of noise and then a few more shots, until eventually silence.

When she went out the next day, the bodies were still in the streets.

"THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO TRAITORS." A large placard read. She felt the nausea rising in her throat. The bodies had already begun to smell in the sun and she tried not to look at an obscene trickle of red in the gutter. A few other townspeople were on the street, trying not to pay attention to the bodies or the German soldiers standing by. She swallowed the lump in her throat and kept walking.

"You see what happens to traitors, Miss Wirtjes? Do I have your name correct?" She turned to see who was addressing her by her fake ID name. It was the older Lieutenant from the check point outside of town.

She nodded at him.

He lit a cigarette calmly. "A most unfortunate event. But needs must and all that. Hopefully it serves as a warning to all those involved in trying to undermine German rule."

She nodded again, trying to control her breathing. He knew. Oh God he knew. Joost must have broken. No. Stay calm. He was just playing mind games with her. If they really knew, she would have been arrested a long time ago.

He was walking closer towards her now. "Do you see? Do you understand the lesson?"

She nodded again, not trusting herself to speak. All of a sudden he grabbed the back of her neck. She cried out in pain and surprise as he thrust her head down, over one of the bodies laying face down at the side of the road. The bullet hole in the back of his head still oozed stickily. She fought down the sickness rising in her stomach and closed her eyes.

"Do you see!" The Lieutenant said again, shaking her head. She whimpered in pain and opened her eyes, nodding vigorously.

And then she saw.

The crescent shaped scar behind the ear of the body.

Joost.


	12. Highway 69: September, 1944

September 1944

"_Wie ist daar?" _

Nix heard a woman's voice call out and the splash of water from behind the screen at the far side of the room. He winced. Caught! He tried not to let his contraband bottles clink together.

"Uh, I'm an American, it's OK."

He heard the splash of water again.

"Lewis Nixon? Is that you?"

He realised suddenly it was Katrien and he let out a sigh.

"Uh, yeah. You caught me!" He joked as he walked towards her.

"Don't come closer!" She shrieked. "I'm taking a bath."

"And that's supposed to make me stop in my tracks?" But he stopped anyway, hovering awkwardly at a safe distance from the wooden screens.

"Funny."

"The room's dark anyway. I can hardly my hand in front of my face." That was a lie. The room was dim, but enough light was being given off by a small lamp in the corner nearest her and the orange embers of the dying stove.

Katrien obviously chose not to respond to that. He heard the trickle of water as she poured water over herself and he squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to think about what she looked like right now.

"What are you doing here anyway?" He asked.

"I could ask the same of you." She shot back.

He grinned sheepishly. "Uh, I'm on an intelligence mission. Scouting supplies, you know."

"Is that right? Is that why you currently have two bottles of Scotch in your hands?"

His mouth gaped open and he tried to hide the bottles behind his back. "How did you..." But he was cut off by a peal of laughter.

"That was a guess. And a good one by the sounds of it."

"Well, what the hell are you doing here? Thought Dick told you to keep your head down. And sorry, but bathing in a farmhouse mere meters away from the barn where an entire company is stationed hardly seems to me like going unnoticed."

She groaned. "An entire company of men, the majority of which don't seem to realise I'm a woman, and who certainly wouldn't go near me, smelling like I have the past few days."

Nix chuckled, thinking to himself that it didn't really matter what state a woman was in at this point in time. He also noticed that she hadn't demanded he leave, so he sank into an armchair by the warm stove.

"I really wanted to wash." She continued. "I came over to the farmhouse to see what was there and I found this tin bathtub, and heated some water up on the stove. And _voila." _She laughed and then sighed. "This is probably the best bath I have _ever _had."

Nix heard the water splash against the tin as she leant back in it as he cracked open the first bottle and sipped it. He felt the warm liquid creep down his throat and the familiar glow spread throughout his body. It made him brave.

"You know, we should conserve water. Fancy sharing?"

"If I was out there I'd slap you." She said.

"Well come on out! No complaints from me."

"Don't be a pig." She said. He felt as though he could hear her eyes rolling. "Or if you are, you could at least offer me a drink." He froze, bottle midway to his mouth.

"I can hear it sloshing about in the bottle. Can't get anything past me. I heard you sit down as well. Seriously, this isn't a peep show!"

But he noticed she still didn't tell him to leave. In fact she did the opposite. "Well, good sir. Where's my drink?"

"Is that an invitation to join you?" He stood up and moved towards her, nearing the wooden screen.

"Do you have your eyes closed?"

"I won't be able to see where I'm going!"

"I thought you said you couldn't see your hand in front of your face anyway, hmm? Come on, just shut your eyes and pass it round."

Swallowing hard, he closed his eyes and felt in front of him for the end of the screen.

"Are they shut?"

"Yes," He said as he found the edge with his free hand. "And I'm going to cover them with my hand as well. See?" He held the bottle out in front of him and felt it being taken out of his hands. He sank back into the chair and imagined her raising the bottle to her lips.

"You know, I can save you the bathwater if you want to go after me. You could probably do with a wash." He heard her laugh quietly to herself. "And a shave," She added.

Nix rubbed his hands across his dark stubble, itching his chin where it grew thicker.

"Those are the kind words I get after giving you a drink? Oh that's real nice Katrien."

They sat in silence for a while and he listened almost hypnotically to the sloshing of water in the tub.

"Anyway, where's your boyfriend?" He asked, opening the second bottle he still held in his hand.

"Nix," She groaned. "Please stop calling him that? Paul's not my boyfriend."

"So how come he's like your shadow?"

She sighed. "He's a friend. That's all. I've known him since I was at university. I think he just feels he has to look after me. Anyway, he's asleep. That's how I snuck away from him in the barn to come and take a bath." She paused. "I'm getting out now, you better shut your eyes again."

"They're shut." He said as he closed them, hearing her stand up and dry herself.

"What's happening now then, Mr. Intelligence?" She asked him. He could hear the clink of a belt buckle on the ground as she began to put on trousers.

"We're still trying to force our way along here and get to Arnhem. By all accounts the battle is not going well."

He heard her still at this.

"So much for liberation," She said softly.

"Yeah I know. Looks like we're going to have to find another way into Germany."

Nix parted the fingers of the hand covering his eyes and squinted through them. Framed by the rainbows of his eyelashes, he was just in time to see the white of the small of her back disappear underneath a heavy navy pullover. He squeezed his eyes shut again.

"You can open now." She said and he opened his eyes to see her standing in front of him. Her hair was down around her face, slightly damp and curling into tendrils, and her face was flushed slightly from the steam. She eased herself into the chair opposite him and sipped from the open bottle she held. He saw her shiver as she swallowed.

"You cold?" Nix asked.

"No, this stuff definitely keeps you warm!" She curled further into the chair. "I think it's going to be a cold winter though."

"Trust me, this stuff has kept me warm on some very long, cold lonely nights."

She smirked at him. "Please. I don't believe you've ever had a cold lonely night. I bet the co-eds just hung off your every word."

He grinned to himself. She wasn't wrong. He went through girlfriends quicker than he went through college courses. "Ah, memories..." He said, taking another drink. "But what about you? Bet you didn't do too bad yourself."

Almost at once her eyes clouded over. She pressed her lips together in a firm line and shook her head. "No."

"What, no steadies?" Nix thought of the photo of the dark haired man he found in her bedroom.

She shook her head again and then turned her face away from him.

"Well the boys in Leiden were definitely missing a trick, if you ask me."

She turned her head slightly and smiled weakly. "I was actually a very dedicated student. Unlike you, by all accounts."

He shrugged. "So many parties, so little time. Though this party is definitely one of the better ones."

She gave him a proper smile this time. "Well, it is pretty...exclusive."

He laughed. "The best ones are."

Katrien tilted her head slightly. "Do you think it's strange that we can sit here and talk and drink whilst out there...the world is still crazy?"

"Yeah. But I think that sometimes this type of normality is exactly what we need. That's what I tell Dick anyway. But he still refuses to drink."

Katrien placed the bottle of whisky on the ground and started rummaging in her pocket for something. "Do you mind?" She asked, nodding towards the packet of Lucky Strikes she produced.

He shook his head. If she was lighting a cigarette, that meant she planned on staying a while, something which he could only welcome.

"Definitely one of the better aspects of the Americans dropping in here. American cigarettes!" She muttered as she held a cigarette in her mouth to light it. She shook the match out and inhaled before removing it from her mouth. "Though obviously the company of dashing American officers such as yourself is another bonus."

"I bet you say that to all the boys."

"Oh you caught me! That's usually my line for all the other men I entertain in my boudoir." She waved her hands around the dingy farmhouse front room jokingly.

They stayed like that for a while, Katrien smoking, Nix drinking, the embers in the stove fading slowly. He was struck by how easy it was to speak to her. Yet at the same time he felt as though there was a whole other side to her, carefully concealed behind her dark eyes.

It was she who made the first move to leave. "Well, I should probably go. I wouldn't be surprised if Paul has woken up and is looking for me." Nix nodded.

"Well, would you allow me the honour of escorting you home?"

"To my penthouse suite in the barn? Why thank you Mr. Nixon." She smiled as they both stood up at the same time. He jokingly offered his arm to her and was slightly taken aback as she slipped her arm into his.

"Look, I just want to say...thank you. For tonight. I really like talking to you. Sometimes I really miss having a friend. Someone who is not a colleague or a resistance contact, but a friend." She smiled at him and he saw her tongue dart out to moisten her lower lip. His head was spinning slightly, he hadn't realised how drunk he really was. He must have drunk nearly the whole bottle himself.

"Wait, do you hear that?"

Katrien jerked away from him. "Someone's coming!" As Nix struggled through the whisky fog he heard the sound of footsteps outside the cottage. Instinctively he pushed her over to the wall, covering her with his own body and placing a finger to his lips.

"Nix, relax, it's probably just one of the guys from the barn who had the same idea as you."

"I know, I know. But I don't really want any rumours to start about us."

"What kind of rumours?" She asked him as she looked him straight in the eye. She was nearly the same height as him, their eyes and _oh God_ their lips were nearly perfectly aligned. He could smell the whisky warmth on her breath – or was it his? – and he was suddenly aware of how easy it would be to close the gap between them, to just lean forward and press his mouth against hers, that's all it would take, just one movement... The moment seemed to last forever, the only sound he could hear was the blood rushing in his ears and their breathing. She must be able to hear his heart beating too, it was so loud.

"Nix I have to go." She said as she jerked her eyes away from him. She ducked under one of the arms he had placed either side of her and out of the room. He heard the front door open and then slam shut again, and the sound of her footsteps walking away from him.

_Shit._

He rubbed his eyes and tried to collect his thoughts. Sighing heavily, he headed to the front door, gulping at the hit of cold air as he stepped outside.

All of a sudden he felt someone grab his collar and force him up against the wall. "What the..." He yelled.

It was Paul. His blue eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. He pushed his face up into Nix's. There was about as much space between them as there had been between him and Katrien only minutes earlier.

"Don't even think about it." Paul hissed as his hand pinned Nix to the wall.

"What? I don't even... Seriously, nothing's..."

"Just. Don't." Paul said again as he released Nix forcefully and turned to stalk off back towards the barn, leaving Nix standing there, bewildered, rubbing his shoulder where Paul had grabbed him.

* * *

The next few days went on in the same nerve-shredding manner. There were various skirmishes as they forced their way slowly and steadily along Highway 69. In between times Nix would seek out Katrien, and would split a cup of coffee or some chocolate – always under the watchful eye of Paul though, who was ever present, glowering away at him from a few feet away. Since the night when he had threatened him, Nix hadn't had any kind of interaction with Paul. Sometimes, he saw Katrien with George Luz who he had asked to keep an eye on her for him. He had winked and made a quip about the future Mrs. Nixon, but he had looked after her. Nix saw him making her laugh more than once, and could have even sworn he saw the corners of Paul's mouth twitch in a smile. He saw her stroking Tab's dog Trigger once or twice, and saw Tab try it on with her too, only to receive a glare from Paul and a roll of the eyes from Katrien.

The night after the battle at the crossroads as they had trudged wearily back to the barn, Dick had pulled him to one side. "Lew, we gotta get rid of Paul and Katrien. It's getting too dangerous for them to be here. I feel like we've helped them out long enough. We need to speak with them."

"We can't just toss them out here! You're right it's dangerous, that's exactly why I feel like we should at least keep them with us until it's a little safer." He scratched his ear absentmindedly and started to walk again as the last man trudged past them.

"Nix, _we_ can't, or _I _can't? The two are different things. I'm not saying I believe them, but rumours are circulating about you and Miss Maartens, and I think that they're wholly unprofessional if they're true. Remember why we're here. Remember what we're here to do."

Nix sighed. He knew Dick was right, even if the thought of leaving her caused him to feel a stab of pain in his side.

He exhaled. "You're right." He said as they reached the barn door. "But what do you want me to say to her? I mean..."

"Say what to me?" Katrien's voice suddenly interjected as they came face to face with here coming through the door.

Dick looked expectantly at him. Nix purposefully didn't make eye contact with him.

"Look, Miss Maartens, Mr. De Groot." Of course Paul was there, he was always bloody there. "I feel as though we have taken you as far as we can. It has been a difficult few weeks and I don't see that getting any easier. If anything it will get worse. I think it's best if from here we go our separate ways." Dick said firmly.

He was met with silence.

"I'm sorry, but I feel there's nothing more we can do for you. We've got you this far. We're moving out tomorrow to go to a village called Schoonderlogt. I suggest you make alternative arrangements."

At the mention of the village, Katrien's eyes lit up. "Get us to Schoonderlogt, please. Our friend Magdalena lives there, her father is the parish priest. If we're there we are amongst friends and indeed amongst other members of the resistance. We can help them, and we can go our separate ways. Please. Just get us to Schoonderlogt."

Dick rubbed his brow and sighed deeply. "Fine. To there. After that you're on your own."

Katrien's face broke into a smile and she grabbed Dick's hand and kissed him once on each cheek. Nix noted with some delight that he blushed deeply. "Thank you." She said. She turned to Nix and paused awkwardly, but planted two kisses on his cheeks also. "Thank you," She whispered into his ear before she turned and walked away. He saw Paul glaring at him before he followed her.

"Alright Lew. Try not to look too happy about it." Dick muttered.

Nix hid the grin on his face with little success.


	13. Schoonderlogt, October 1944

**A/N: **Only one chapter this time I'm afraid! It's quite a long one, but I didn't really want to split it up.

Just a personal note about Operation Pegasus: my great-uncle was a British paratrooper who was stranded after the failure of Market Garden. He was hidden by a Dutch family until he was able to be rescued. After the end of the war, he returned to Holland to find the family who helped him, and ended up marrying the daughter of the family. He lived there until he died a few years back.

* * *

Schoonderlogt, October 1944

"Lew. Wake up. They want us back at regiment."

He was vaguely aware of Dick's voice cutting through the fog of sleep but chose to ignore it. Maybe he was still dreaming.

"Come on! Get up! Let's go."

He heard it again, accompanied by a brisk clap. How was he always so up and at them in the morning? He heard the curtain across his bed being pulled back and heard Dick again, closer this time. "Come on, something's up, Strayer's orders."

"OK, go ahead, I'll be right down." He mumbled into his pillow. That tactic usually worked when his mother was trying to get him up for church. Unfortunately Dick wasn't quite as gullible as his mother. He felt a slap on his thigh. "Leave me alone." He mumbled again.

Then he heard nothing but felt the splash of a liquid on the side of his face which caused him to jerk awake, not realising for a split second what it was Dick had thrown at him.

"Goddamit" he said as he realised what it was. "Oh, that's my own piss for Chrissakes." He wrinkled his nose in disgust and tried to wipe it off with his pillow before throwing it at Dick.

"Oh yeah, real funny." He muttered darkly as he started to move off his bed. He saw Dick smirking that infuriating Dick smirk and he pulled himself to his feet and started to tackle him, purposefully trying to get as much of his piss as he could on Dick's pristine uniform.

"Well that's a wake up call and a half." He heard a woman's voice say wryly.

Shit. Katrien was standing right behind Dick, her mouth caught between amusement and disgust. How long had she been there? He jerked away from Dick, acutely aware he was clad just in his underwear and currently dripping with urine. Such a smooth operator.

"Come on Lew, we need to get going. Seems pretty urgent. Strayer wants us and Miss Maartens and Mr. De Groot. There's a jeep downstairs"

"Can we get him a shower first?" Katrien asked as she wrinkled her nose slightly.

"Try and wash up as best you can Nix." Dick exhaled sharply. "And quickly." He walked out the room briskly. Katrien turned to follow him, arms followed.

"Oh Lew?" She said as she reached the door, turning back to look at him.

"Yeah?"

Her mouth twitched in a grin. "Nice legs." She said, before ducking out the room.

Nix dropped backwards onto the bed in defeat.

A short while later, a freshly showered Nix was smoking a cigarette and holding court in the jeep. "Are you even listening to me?" He demanded of Dick as he waxed lyrical about how they could win the war.

"Hanging on every word," Dick said as he swung himself out of the jeep.

Nix sighed, stubbed out his cigarette and followed, realising Katrien was smiling at him as she climbed out of the back seat. He offered his hand to her and she ignored it. He gave a small laugh to himself.

"I don't know why someone hasn't put you in charge already." She said as she smoothed down her hair.

"I don't know why you're in such a good mood," Nix frowned. "You drank just as much as I did last night." He and Katrien had sat in the living room of the house he was quartered in, listening to records and ignoring Dick's warnings that he should try and get some sleep.

"Actually, I think you finished that bottle mostly on your own." She whispered to him, aware that Paul was standing very close by.

"My mistake then. I probably owe you a drink." He grinned and she gave a small close mouthed smile in response. They pushed through the doors of Battalion HQ to find a group of men crowded round a map laid out on a table. Sink gestured for them to come over and he introduced the man in the red beret as Colonel Dobie.

"The British lost 8000 men when Market Garden fell on its ass, which is why Colonel Dobie here has been tasked to co-ordinate a rescue operation for the troops that were trapped when Arnhem fell." Sink explained.

"The Dutch resistance are hiding 140 men here, in a town north of the river." Colonel Dobie chimed in, pointing to a place on the map and nodding at Paul and Katrien. "The plan is for them to assemble in the woods on the edge of the river here, and for a team of your men to meet them and get them back across the river."

"140 men?" Nix asked incredulously as he sipped a much welcomed coffee.

"The Canadians have given us six boats, and the rendezvous point is isolated and landable. I swam it myself last night." Dobie said as he made his way over to another map spread out on a board. Jackass, thought Nix to himself, and he caught Katrien's eye as she mouthed the same thing to him.

"At 0030, my men will assemble on the banks and signal with a red torch." Dobie paused. "That's a red flashlight to you yanks." I know that, Nix thought darkly to himself. I'm not an idiot.

"It's called Operation Pegasus, and is due to occur tomorrow night when there's a new moon, meaning we'll have excellent cover." Sink said. "Until then, this is when you two come in." He gestured at Paul and Katrien. "It's my understanding that the Resistance round these parts currently prints an underground paper called," He paused to consult his papers. "_Trouw." _Katrien suppressed a grin at his butchering of the Dutch word.

She nodded. "Yes, it means something like 'loyalty'or 'allegiance', maybe." Katrien said. "It's printed by Church group, headed by my friend Magdalena's father."

Sink nodded. "Well, as Colonel Dobie mentioned, around 140 men are currently being harboured by the resistance and sympathisers. What we need to do is get word to them all about Operation Pegasus and tell them when and where to assemble. And if necessary, we may ask you to visit them personally and make sure everyone knows. Can you do that?"

Katrien and Paul nodded.

"If you can go to _Trouw_'s headquarters and get something printed up, Miss Maartens, do that now. Nix, go with her, make sure everything printed is correct. Mr. De Groot, stay here and help us with some translation."

Katrien and Nix headed towards the door, Nix's heart rejoicing as Paul was kept behind.

"So where are we going?" He asked.

"To the church. _Trouw _is printed there."

They walked in companionable silence for a while through the town, enjoying the sun.

"Is Dick alright? He seemed a little out of it just then."

Nix shrugged. "I think he feels like he's lost Easy a little bit. He'll be OK, he always will be. I just don't think it's really his thing to be behind a desk all the time."

When they reached the church, Katrien led him round the back way and into the robing room. She knocked three sharp raps on the door and it was opened by Magdalena. The two women embraced and Katrien turned back to Nix.

"You remember my friend Magdalena, don't you?"

* * *

Of course he did. A couple of days ago when they had arrived into town, a female shriek had cut through the swarm of khaki milling about in the town square and the running engines of trucks and cars. Katrien had run towards the source of the shriek, and the crowds of men had parted so Nix could see Katrien hugging a smaller woman with neat dark blonde hair and round gold glasses. The smaller woman had kissed her repeatedly on both cheeks, letting loose a long stream of Dutch as she did so. A far more conservative reunion took place with Paul as she shook his hand and kissed him quickly, a light peck on both cheeks.

"Well, we did what we said we'd do." Dick said as he appeared suddenly at Nix's shoulder. "We got her to Schoonderlogt, and she's with her friend now."

Nix's eyes remained on Katrien and the other woman, who was laughing and trying to drag her away somewhere.

"How long are we here for?" He asked.

Dick shrugged. "Not sure as of now. Probably not terribly long though. A few Dutch families have offered to put us up in billets as long as we're here though."

Nix's eyes followed Katrien as she was pulled away from the square by the other woman.

"Nix? Are you listening to a single word I'm saying?"

"Hanging on every word," He joked, slapping Dick on the shoulder.

They'd seen each other again, only a short time later when Nix and some of the other commanding officers received a dinner invite from some of the local pillars of the community. Crowded around a smallish dining table, he found himself rubbing shoulders with Katrien and the mayor of the small town. The meal wasn't lavish by any standards, and Nix ate every single bite slowly, relishing the feel of Katrien's leg pressed right up against his. He thought about trying his luck and giving her knee a squeeze before deciding against it. That might work with a dippy co-ed, but probably wouldn't fly with her. Magdalena had sat opposite him and given him a knowing glance the whole night.

And so here they were again. Katrien and Magdalena were talking in Dutch to one another. Katrien said something, laughing and Magdalena crossed herself. Damn. He wondered what they were talking about. But nevermind that, he had to focus all his attention on navigating the narrow spiral staircase they were now descending. He had to squint to see through the dark and he 1planted one hand on the wall to try and stop himself from falling. When they emerged into a dimly lit cellar, both he and Katrien had to slouch slightly to avoid hitting their heads on the ceiling. In the corner there stood a printing press.

Magdalena rolled up the sleeves of her cardigan and rooted around on shelves for a piece of paper and a pencil. "Right," she said. "Let's get to work!"

It seemed to Nix as though they were down there for hours, first writing out an announcement to circulate amongst the Dutch families harbouring stranded British soldiers, and then getting the printing press whirring away so they could be distributed straight away. He provided the information in English and watched the women's brows wrinkle as they tried to translate it all properly into Dutch. But as it turned out, hardly any time had elapsed since they were down there and Nix had to shield his eyes from the sun that was still shining brightly when they were outside again. He stood a little away from the church whilst Katrien and Magdalena said their goodbyes, raising his hand in farewell to Magdalena as she disappeared back inside.

"Well, I'll probably go out with some others tonight to distribute those papers." Katrien said to him as she jammed her hands in the pockets of an oversized military coat. Despite the bright sunshine, there was a definite chill in the air. "We'll head over the river in a truck with a false bottom. Pretend we're just shifting potatoes. It usually works."

They walked slowly back to HQ together. "How long will you be here for?" Katrien asked – did he detect a hint of hopefulness in her voice?

He shrugged. "Not sure really. As soon as we rescue those stranded soldiers tomorrow night we'll probably be straight out of here. I mean, it looks like we're going to have to find another way into Germany. What will you do?"

Katrien pursed her lips and sighed. "Stay here I suppose. It's nice to be with Magdalena again. There's enough for me to do here. And then...well, I hope the war finishes soon and then I can return to normal life. Well, as much of a normal life as I can have. I find it...difficult to think about living the way I did before. You know, having a life without war."

Nix nodded in agreement. "Do you think you'll go back to university?"

"I'd like to. You know, get my degree. But it just seems so unreal to even think about that, you know? How can I possibly return to sitting in classrooms and writing essays after all this..." She tailed off and looked at a point in the middle distance.

"You know what makes me feel better when I think about all that?" Nix asked.

She shook her head.

He reached into his breast pocket and brought out his hipflask, newly refreshed from Dick's footlocker. He shook it to make the liquid slosh around.

She smiled a little ruefully. "You can't hide at the bottom of a bottle forever, Lew."

He shrugged. "Yeah, I know. But it's great for a little while." He unscrewed the lid and took a deep swig from it. "Go on." He proffered it to her.

She smiled, more broadly this time and took it from his outstretched hand.

Nix smiled as she spluttered slightly at the whisky's burn.

"Anyway, what will Mr. Nixon do after all this? You've been uncharacteristically quiet about that." She nudged him playfully.

Nix thought about Cathy. He thought about New Jersey. He thought about his parents. He thought about the job waiting for him. He thought of all of these things and just shook his head. "Don't really know." He said. "Who wants to be tied down to something? I've been enjoying my tour of Europe anyway."

That at least elicited a small laugh from her.

They were almost back at HQ now and she hesitated.

"Look," She said. "I know it's not my manner to be a bit soppy, or however you say it. But...I just want to say thank you. For the first time in a very long time, I've felt almost happy. I feel like I can be a normal woman around you, and make jokes and smile. And it's been a long time since I felt like just a young woman."

Nix smirked. "Well, if I had known you felt that way..."

Katrien rolled her eyes. "Slow down, I said _almost_ happy. Don't go making that head any bigger than it already is."

He smiled at her, genuinely this time, and she pulled her eyes away from him.

"Anyway, I have to go and get ready to deliver _Trouw_ tonight. I'll see you tomorrow when I'm back, yes?"

He nodded.

They stood almost awkwardly for a while, before she flung her arms around his neck and gave him a quick squeeze before walking away, pausing only to glance over her shoulder at him.

"Nix? You OK?" Dick appeared behind him. "Come on, you've got stuff to do before tomorrow night."

"Yeah yeah." He said, not taking his eyes off Katrien's retreating back.

He didn't breathe easy until he saw her climbing out of the truck the following morning.

* * *

"WAHEI MOHAMMED!"

The Paratroopers' battle cry resounded around the barn as hundreds of men raised their glasses and sometimes bottles. A British major congratulated and thanked Easy for their work and proposed a toast to Easy company, victory and Currahee. Nix shouted as loud as he could in unison with the other men, raising their fists in the air and swirling red berets. "CURRAHEE!"

Operation Pegasus had been a resounding success. Of course, if Market Garden had gone half as well, they wouldn't have had to carry it out in the first place. But Nix didn't let himself dwell on such thoughts. There was something of party going on tonight, and he wasn't about to spoil the mood. The locals had pooled together their liquor cabinets to provide "refreshments" and someone had found a gramophone and some records which sat playing away in the corner. Nix saw Magdalena with a red beret askew on her head, laughing shyly with a group of Brits, and there were a few other Dutch civilians scattered around the place. He was sure he even saw Paul cracking a smile and nursing a drink with another group of guys, a mixture of UK and US troops.

But of course he was only looking for one civilian in particular.

He saw Magdalena resisting the advances of one over-amorous paratrooper and made his way over.

"Excuse me, gents." He said as he pulled her away from them to a chorus of disappointment and disapproval.

"Thanks," She smiled at him and took a sip from her drink as he led her over to a couple of old milking stools at the side of the makeshift dancefloor. There wasn't an awful lot of dancing going on, given the shortage of women, but it didn't stop some of the guys swaying drunkenly, almost in time to the music. It was hard to hear the music anyway over the din of shouts and laughter.

"So I know who you're looking for." Magdalena spoke and he averted his eyes from scanning the crowd and tried not to look guilty.

"I don't know what you're talking about." He said, but he grinned in spite of himself. "Alright, you caught me."

"She'll be coming, don't worry. She wouldn't miss a party."

"Do you know each other well?" He asked her.

She shook her head. "Well, bizarrely it was the war that brought us together. We went to the same university but moved in completely different circles. I met her through Pieter, and we worked as part of the same resistance cell."

Nix swallowed the lump in his throat at the mention of the man's name, and he thought suddenly of the dark haired man in the photograph he found in Katrien's bedroom in Eindhoeven, the one he still had jammed in the front pocket of one of his shirts.

"Ah yes, Pieter, her...?" He tailed off, waiting for Magdalena to finish the sentence.

"Boyfriend, yes." She supplied. She didn't seem to notice his pause, or if she did she was just too polite to mention it. "Do you know they pretended they weren't together the whole time we were in Leiden? She only told me much later."

Where is he now? He wanted to ask, but all of a sudden a couple of red devils appeared at their sides, begging Magdalena for a dance. She blushed, but obliged, mouthing sorry to Nix as she was swept away.

"So I leave you alone for two minutes and you're already moving on to another girl?" Katrien's voice came from behind him, making him jump. He turned, and almost didn't recognise her. She was wearing a dark green belted dress with a cardigan over the top. And was that a bit of lipstick? She blushed as she realised he was looking at her and shifted uncomfortably.

"Didn't your mother teach you it's rude to stare?" She said.

"I'm sorry, I was expecting my friend Katrien. Have you seen her anywhere? Man's jumper, man's trousers..." He tailed off as she hit his shoulder.

"I'm joking. You look very nice."

She smiled shyly. "Thank you. We're celebrating, so I thought I'd make an effort. I'd say the same for you, but..." She gestured at his crumpled uniform and he grinned.

"Well, can this schmuck in the dirty uniform ask the beautiful lady to dance?"

She pretended to look around her. "Well, if I can find you one, I'll ask her."

"Come on," He said taking her hand and pulling her toward the dance floor.

She groaned. "How embarrassing!" But she placed her hand on his shoulder and didn't protest as she slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her closer to him, so her chin rested on his shoulder.

_Heaven, I'm in heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak, _he thought to himself.

"Hey, man's supposed to lead." He said to her.

"You obviously don't know me that well if you just assume I follow," She quipped into his ear.

_And I seem to find the happiness I seek._

He chuckled softly to himself as he pulled her slightly closer to him.

_When we're out together, dancing cheek to cheek._

He thought again of what Magdalena had said to him and he wondered whether she had danced with Pieter like this. Indeed, whether she still wanted to dance like this with Pieter.

"Who's Pieter?" He asked softly.

He instantly regretted it. He felt her freeze in his arms.

"Who told you about him?" She demanded quietly.

He pulled away from her. "No one has, that's my point. I hear his name, and I just don't know how he seems to be such an important part of your life that Paul talks about him, Magdalena talks about him but you never do." He was raising his voice now and he was aware of some troops eavesdropping round about them.

"Because it's absolutely none of your business." She said with a hard edge to her voice. He could see tears shining in her eyes as she turned around and stormed out of the barn leaving him alone in the middle of the dancefloor.

* * *

It took him all of ten minutes to find her again. Eventually he found her, her back turned, behind a smaller outhouse a little way away from the barn. From here, the din coming from it sounded like distant hum. She was holding an unlit cigarette between her two fingers.

"You know it usually works better if you light it." He joked.

She didn't turn around.

"Go away please."

"Look, Katrien, I'm sorry if what I said upset you. I just wanted to know who this guy was. You know, see if I have any competition." He tried to sound jovial.

She whipped around angrily then and he could see the tears streaming down her face.

"Competition for what?" She demanded. "As far as I'm aware, this is just a convenient wartime friendship and that's it."

"Aw come on, don't play dumb! Hell, half of Easy and their mothers know I like you. Don't act like you didn't realise that. And as far as I'm aware," He said, mocking her earlier speech, "You were reciprocating. Yet I don't know if you still have a boyfriend or what the hell is going on."

Her eyes widened as she choked back a sob. "We're playing that game? Well why didn't you mention the fact that you're married!"

He closed his eyes. And was it his imagination, or did the barn fall silent at that exact moment in time?

"Katrien," He started. "You don't understand. My wife and I, things haven't been good for a long time."

"And that's an excuse?"

"I'm not making excuses, I just need you to know I'm not some philandering husband. And who the hell told you anyway?"

"Paul did. He found out from one of the guys and told me to stay away from you. I didn't really believe him at first. You don't wear a ring, and I thought to myself, Lew would've told me. But you just confirmed it for me there."

He took a step towards her. "Katrien..." He tailed off. He couldn't think of anything more to say.

"Don't come any closer." She warned him as more tears dripped down her cheeks.

"I'm sorry." It sounded lame.

"I just...I don't know what I thought. I just feel so confused." She said, sniffing.

Nix placed a hand on each arm and she didn't shrug him off.

She inhaled deeply and let out a wavering sigh as she moved further into his arms. He could feel the wet from her tears soaking into his shirt and he held her gently, not daring to move just in case she stormed off again.

"I think..." She began, looking at Nix straight in the eye. "I think I really like you." She said with just a slight catch in her voice.

He wasn't sure who moved first, whether it was him or her. All he was certain of was that all of a sudden her lips were pressed on his. It was so innocent and so sweet it could have been mistaken for a kiss between friends. And then all of a sudden he heard her sigh in frustration and she grabbed his face in her hands and pushed her mouth more eagerly into his. He reciprocated, opening his mouth a little wider and wrapping his arms around her hips, pressing his hands flat along her back. She suddenly jerked her hips into his so that her whole body was pressed right up against him, and he could feel his body responding to her, _fuck,_ but then again it had been a while. It was rough and clumsy and almost desperate and in the confusion one of her tears fell onto his face. Then all of a sudden it was if she realised what she was doing, and she broke away from him, breathing heavily. She turned and walked, almost running away into the dark night, leaving Nix standing there, panting, hair stuck up all over the place, his entire body throbbing.

* * *

When he felt as though he had calmed down a bit, he smoothed down the back of his hair and returned to the party in the barn, which was becoming more and more subdued. He found Magdalena sitting alone and he joined her.

"Where did you go?" She asked him.

"I was speaking to Katrien." That was half true. "She's wandered off somewhere because I brought up Pieter."

She made a face of sympathy. "It's still difficult for her to talk about."

He shrugged. "Yeah well, I'm sure as the war's over I'm sure they can be together again. She can forget I ever existed." He tried to hide the bitterness in his voice.

He felt Magdalena still beside him. He turned to look her and she blinked slowly. Her eyes seemed suddenly weary.

"Lewis," She began. "She never told you, did she?"

He frowned. "She hasn't told me an awful lot, but what in particular?"

She swallowed. "Katrien was with Pieter for nearly four years. Everyone was sure they'd get married when they were finished with university. Oh Katrien was pretty adamant that she had to have a degree first." She smiled softly.

"Well, I'm sure they still can." He said.

"His name was Pieter Abrams." She said, emphasising his surname. "He was Jewish. When the Nazis tried to deport the Jews from the Leiden area, there was a bit of a scuffle." She paused and took a shaky breath as she looked away from him, as though trying to find the words.

"They killed him, Nix." She said finally. "They shot him in front of everyone, including Katrien. They left his body laying in the square for three days as a warning to everyone else. For three days, Katrien had to walk past that whenever she had to go somewhere. That's why she won't talk about him, that's why they can't be together. Pieter's dead, Nix. He's been dead for nearly two years."


End file.
